Gerakan today expressed support for Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's statement that action will be taken against a national service commandant after one trainee under his charge drowned on Saturday.

Party vice-president Dr S Vijayaratnam said such action was necessary in order to safeguard the image of the training programme.

"Granted that it (the programme) is new and untested, despite the numerous dry runs held, every precaution has to be taken to ensure the safety of the participants is not compromised in any way.

"If for a moment, there is reason to believe that a particular activity or excursion might incur an element of risk, it has to be abandoned until safety can be assured to the limit of human capability," he was quoted as saying by Bernama .

Yesterday, Najib said the drowning of T Saravanan, who hailed from Taiping, could have been averted if the Gua Musang camp commandant in Kelantan had adhered to the rules.

Following the drowning of another trainee last month, all swimming activities had been prohibited.

The victim's family has called for a proper post-mortem to be conducted after they discovered bruises on Saravanan's body. A police report was also lodged by his father M Terumany, a 54-year-old ambulance driver.

Unsympathetic trainers

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department and Taiping parliamentarian M Kayveas, who visited the family, took the trainers to task over their unsympathetic attitude.

"The NS trainers could have conveyed what happened in a more sympathetic manner to Saravanan's family than just saying 'we are informing you that your son is dead'.

"They should also have provided some help to the family, not just wash their hands and go," he was quoted as saying in a news report yesterday.

Kayveas also criticised the trainers' lack of respect for merely covering the naked body of the victim with a piece of cloth.

"Proper respect should have been given to a person serving his country," he said.

The minister also revealed that he was not spared the fury of the deceased's mother.

"She scolded the government, she scolded everyone. As a member of the government, I felt the brunt of her anger and sadness," he said.

Merits outweigh drawbacks

Meanwhile, Vijayaratnam said the government must realise that young people had been mandatorily left in their care.

"In the very unfortunate drowning incident, it is regrettable that the commandant had permitted the boys to go on a picnic where swimming was allowed.

"This is all the more appalling when a general directive to the contrary had been issued to all camps in view of an earlier drowning accident at another NS camp," he added.

As for the programme, he said the merits outweighed its drawbacks.

"It will go a long way in instilling integration, comradeship, group skills, patriotism and a sense of fair play. Still, where human life is concerned, no measure of precaution can be over-emphasised," he added.