'Drop quota system in armed forces'

By FMT Staff

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah DAP wants the quota system in the armed forces removed and the conditions to join the military relaxed.

Kudat DAP chief Alex Wong said these were the main reasons, apart from “low pay”, that discouraged youths from joining the Malaysian armed forces.

"It is ridiculous to say that if we don't join the armed forces, it means that we don’t love the country...," he said, referring to Defence Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's controversial insinuation that non-Malays were “less patriotic”.

Last week in Parliament, Zahid listed the reason why fewer non-Malays joined the military.

Said Wong: "If the conditions are relaxed and there is no quota limit, we believe many people will be keen to join the army. It is better for Sabahans to join the (armed) forces than for them to beg for food in Kuala Lumpur."

Wong said that many non-Bumiputeras, especially the Chinese and Rungus people in Kudat, were interested to join the uniformed corp but were often unsuccessful.

"Everytime there is an intake or recruitment exercise in Kudat, the applicants are rejected. Many of these young people move away to the city or seek jobs in Peninsular Malaysia.

"Why is there such a high rate of rejection of our local applicants? Are we not qualified enough to join the armed forces and police?" he asked in a statement today.

Another bridge collapses

Meanwhile in Beaufort, yet another bridge has collapsed, cutting off an entire community from the nearest township.

An exasperated Beaufort DAP chairman Jamil Zakaria, who was at the site inspecting the collapsed bridge, slammed the Barisan Nasional government whom he accused of jeopardising lives.

"How can we expect the government like this to take good care of the poor people? It is better for us to ditch them (BN) and have a new government.

"We can’t continue to put ourselves in jeopardy anymore, and our suffering is getting intolerable day by day," he said.

On Nov 13, torrential rains and floods washed away the wooden bridge which was the primary link for families and houses living opposite the main road.

"Now there is no way for them to get across. These people informed the authority some years ago that the wooden bridge was in danger of collapsing and that they needed a new bridge. The BN government then began work on the construction of the new bridge.

"But for some unknown reason, work has stopped now for many years. Now the (wooden) bridge has collapsed into the river.

"Luckily, there was nobody or car crossing at that time or a tragedy would have occurred. This is a typical BN project... left uncompleted, and inconveniencing the people, " said Jamil.