Proposal for young people to do national service three times

KUALA LUMPUR: A proposal to compel every young citizen of the country to undergo the National Service Training Programme (PLKN) three times at the age of 12, 15 and 17 is among the proposals raised and discussed by the National Transformation 2050 (TN50) Circles of the Future.
Youth and Sports Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said under the subtopic of national identity, the proposal was aimed at enabling the young generation to share a common experience as Malaysians.
"Today, we see many youth having no common experience as some went to national school, some to Chinese school and also Tamil school.
"If we cannot get them to attend only one type of school, at least they must be compelled to undergo the programme three times and take the same training courses regardless of their backgrounds," he told reporters after attending the TN50 Circles of the Future discussion here today.
The circles comprised 200 youths who were divided into five discussion groups analysing five main topics, namely Work and Value Creation, Living and Wellbeing, Governance, Society and Lifestyle.
Khairy said other proposal towards realising the TN50 was to encourage the people's ability to create sustainable living condition at personal level.
For example, he said the society should be able to measure the amount of their household waste towards becoming a zero waste society or how they could reduce their household waste in terms of the collection.
"In the matter of health, there was a proposal for the public health status not to be measured by the number of hospitals and doctors, but by how far the country was able to prevent disease by promoting healthy lifestyle," he said.
For that, the minister said it would involve various other aspects, including education, nutritional policy and urban planning.
Also discussed were the proposals to retrain youths who have entered employment and to measure social mobility more frequently.
Meanwhile, Khairy said the results of the analysis by the circles would be made public in October before the final town hall session is held with Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak.
TN50 is an effort to chart the direction of the country in the next 30 years after Vision 2020.
The Youth and Sports Ministry has been entrusted with the responsibility to collect the aspirations of youths for TN50 after it was announced by Najib during the tabling of 2017 Budget last October. — Bernama