I refer to the letter NS: Najib gets only one out four correct .

Good on you Prof Dr M Tajuddin for your persistent voice against the National Service shame. As far as I know sixteen innocent lives have been sacrificed in the ‘death camps’. Our hearts bleed for the parents of those precious sixteen. Our blood boils at the callous indifference of those who directly or indirectly contributed to their untimely deaths. There ought to be a coroner’s inquiry into every death.

Then, this week the media reported that 67 trainees came down with food poisoning at the Barracuda camp barely a week after a similar case involving eight trainees. Fourteen of the trainees were warded which is an indication of the seriousness of their problem since food poisoning can be fatal. This incident following so closely after a ‘zero death’ target promised by Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak must now be cause for grave concern. No pun intended. If I may ask bluntly will the minister now promise that if another NS trainee dies that he will take full personal responsibility? If he cannot deliver or is unwilling to let the buck stop at his feet he should not make false promises and set a target which the NS scheme will never achieve.

The question people should ask is why was ‘zero death’ not established at the onset? Why set the target now after sixteen have died? Did it mean that the planners of the scheme had expected some NS trainees to die? Were parents and trainees warned before they signed up? One death is one too many. With obvious flaws in the system and no guarantee that all trainees will leave the training camps alive, the sensible thing to do is to bury or suspend the scheme before more parents have to bury their children.

Perhaps it ought to be mandatory for Najib to sit by the side of every dying trainee and be at their funerals and listen to the cries of their friends and loved ones. Then he can decide if even a single death is acceptable. Even soldiers undergoing military training don't have that many casualties and the public can't be complacent in allowing these ‘death camps’ to continue. As one who has lost a child even one at birth, the pain of losing a loved one is incredibly hard to bear. How much tougher it is for parents to lose their loved children at the peak of their youth with the future in their grasp? Those who merely consider the deaths as statistics show a callous lack of human compassion and empathy.

If another NS trainee dies, the minister in charge and the government should be held accountable because more innocent blood will be on their hands and conscience especially when there has been such opposition to the scheme for its lack of safety. If I had a son or daughter, I will never send them to such an obviously dangerous place where even basic food hygiene is not guaranteed. These youths are at the entire mercy of the trainers yet their safety is not properly safeguarded. It is a national scandal.

I say dismantle the NS training scheme and return the children to their parents alive. Instead do all the training needed in schools. Many of us grew up in schools that provided everything that we needed to grow up to be all-rounded individuals.

Should not the government be renovating its education system instead of throwing piles of money into a scheme with dubious credentials and worth? And that has resulted in sixteen appalling deaths? The existence of the National Scheme is a sign of the failure of the education system in producing good citizens. But it is no viable solution. Those who tried to re-invent the wheel and succumbed to a narrow nationalism destroyed the system that produced outstanding students of my generation.

The racial polarisation that we read about occurring in schools is the result of tampering with the system that the British left behind for us intact, that was second to none but which has fallen into mediocrity. You can blame the folly of the politicians who - though recipients of the British system that made them successful - transformed it into something inferior. The rot didn’t happen overnight. It infects the whole education system right to university level. And here we are dabbling with pie in the sky ideas of sending astronauts into space when tens of thousands of Malaysian youth can't even write a decent letter in English and are jobless.

My advice to the parents of those sixteen innocent victims is to get together and get a good lawyer to sue the government and those culpable for their untimely deaths. Taxpayers who are also parents shouldn't mind the money paid out as compensation. Hopefully, it will be a deterrent for the government to desist from further negligence.

There ought to be a fund-raising initiative and lawyers should offer their ‘national service’ to these parents. Since we live by the rule of law, let the law take its course and give justice to the parents because the blood of the sixteen innocent lives cry out for justice. Suing the government and putting it on notice may yet save more young lives and may be the most effective message to send the callously and criminially negligent.

How many more innocent Malaysians must suffer and die before the government comes to its senses?