National Service makes a comeback

The government has agreed to bring back the National Service Training Programme (PLKN) after it was stopped in 2018 by the Pakatan Harapan administration.

Now with a different training scheme, over 20,000 youths will undergo training at existing military camps for 45 days.

At a press conference in Parliament today, Defence Minister Mohamad Hasan said the previous PLKN scheme had resulted in exorbitant funds paid by the government.

“Yes, it’s true that the (PLKN) 1.0 trained 900,000 youths in 16 years. In that period, we spent about RM8.05 billion,” he said.

He added that the new scheme could cost the government less than RM100 million a year as opposed to RM500 million in the previous years.

The minister said that a special committee has been formed to split the programme into phases - the first when students were still in secondary school and the second, after.

He added that the special committee will be referred to the National Security Council for approval.

The National Service was first introduced in 2004 which involved randomly selected youths undergoing a three-month programme post-secondary school.

Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak suspended the training in 2015, stating it would save RM400 million for the year.

It restarted the following year and was scrapped in 2018 by then-youth and sports minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman.

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