I am no expert here. But as a father with a son going to NS in two years’ time, I have my concerns. And my concerns are twofold: complacency and transparency.
Before that, let me just say that I have served my NS with a mixed feeling of pride and reservation, mostly the former.
Pride, because I enjoyed the camaraderie, the friendship forged and the teamwork. Reservation, because you sometimes wonder whether it is still as relevant as before considering the modern era of remote technological warfare and the potency of nuclear decimation.
But having said that, NS is a good training ground to prepare our sons for the real world out there, that is, it is a good maturing process for them - even if the deterrent/preventive mindset of mutual assured destruction and how war is an affront to our modern-day sensibility have not already kept a costly confrontation between neighbourly states at bay.
Well, some may disagree, and feel that the two years spent is a distraction, if not wasteful.
I however think that my son can learn valuable lessons of discipline, cooperation and personal growth while serving NS.
After all, in one’s long career shell-life till retirement, one often looks back at the relatively brief two-year stint served with warmth nostalgia rather than cold regrets.
Yet, there is a bittersweet feeling about serving NS with the recent demise of Aloysius Pang. That is, the “sweet” savour of looking back after you have gone through it and have this sense of achievement and fraternity with friends and the good times shared. We trust our sons will feel the same.
And the “bitter” taste of the general anxiety you feel about whether safety is consistently the top priority of the people up there in the regimental hierarchy.
Every parent who send his son to the jetty or bus terminal watching him in his smart four or camouflage overall for the first time cannot help but feel proud as well as pensive (if not apprehensive) about his son’s time and well being in NS.
Even Chief of Defence Force Melvyn Ong acknowledged this when he said the following in the wake of Aloysius’ passing: -
“Our parents - we are all parents, many of us are - come to the BMT graduation parade, and I see the pride in their eyes when they see their children serving national service. Parents are proud of their children serving national service. But on the other hand, it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. And we must ensure that parents are assured.”
Melvyn then added: -
“To the parents, I will say this: As a system, the SAF has put in place a good system. For all the incidents that have occurred, for all the findings ... and recommendations on how to improve the safety systems, we have fully brought them on board, be it in the areas of heat injuries or in the areas of vehicle safety. I think we don't shirk away from this and we always want to be better.”
While I do not doubt that our Army is a self-reflective, pro-active and safety-minded organisation, there is always this two-fold concern - complacency and transparency.
Honestly, I do not know whether there is any safety protocol robust, thorough and alert enough to fully guard against those fallible side of human nature.
These two concerns (complacency and transparency) were raised by journalist Lim Min Zhang in today’s article “SAF needs to prove deeper into safety culture.”
Min Zhang noted that after the terrible 2012 when “four SAF servicemen died in separate training incidents that year alone,” there has been four good years of zero fatalities.”
That is, from 2013 to 2016, before the first death occurred in Sept 2017, starting with four fatalities (two armoured vehicle accidents, one heatstroke and one involving a falling tree branch) and ending with the demise of Aloysius on Wednesday.
In total, five deaths over 16 months.
That four good years of zero fatalities was mainly attributed to the impact of the External Review Penal on SAF Safety (ERPSS). And even Defence Minister Dr Ng gave this glowing tribute to ERPSS: “The contributions of this penal have had the impact of saving lives.”
This led Min Zhang to ask: “Is there a culture of complacency that might have slipped in after the four years of zero fatalities?”
He further raised this point for consideration: -
“Also, the move in lowering the current training tempo - which refers to the duration, intensity and frequency of training activities - raises the question of whether it has been climbing to an unsustainable level over the past years.”
Another pertinent question asked was: “Have the recommendations by the various safety review panels, including the first ERPSS, been effectively implemented?”
As for transparency, Min Zhang wrote: -
“There are many questions the public has which the SAF could not answer at the moment. For instance, it is unclear who pressed the automatic button to lower the gun barrel that crushed CFC Pang against the interior of the howitzer’s cabin...There are also no details on whether (Pang) was aware that the gun barrel was being lowered and if there were attempts to stop it.”
Personally, since an investigation is ongoing, I feel that transparency (as in full disclosure) cannot be fully satisfied until the investigation is complete. The last thing Mindef wants is to hasten a reply and then retract or correct it later.
However, for me, transparency is not so much on the ground level, where things happen and where parents sadly lose their sons and those directly responsible (at ground zero) are made to account, persecuted and discharged.
For me, transparency (or the lack of it) is in the words of the Chief of Defence Force when he said earlier: -
“To the parents, I will say this: As a system, the SAF has put in place a good system...I think we don't shirk away from this and we always want to be better.”
While I don’t doubt the Chief’s good intention, yet with 5 fatalities over 16 months, every parent whose son is serving or going to serve NS cannot be faulted to question whether is this what he meant by “we always want to be better” when young lives - who are called to give their life for the country - are lost from loved ones and are never going back to them?
And while it is one thing to grieve over your son who sacrificed his life in a war to defend the country, it is really another thing altogether to grieve over the loss of your beloved child over peacetime training, and words like “we always want to be better”, “SAF has put in place a good system” or even this, “it is our responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. And we must ensure that parents are assured,” can at times fall short (or fail to assure).
So, going back to transparency, I feel that it ought to start at the highest levels first in order to restore public confidence because NS is not only about offering our sons to the country for a contingent cause, but it is also, if not more so, about trusting that they will serve “the good regimental system” well with pride and then, return to us so that we can tell them face-to-face how proud we are of them.
And it is again one thing if the fatalities are freak accidents or acts of god (so to speak), but it is a different thing altogether if they are preventable (by, well, never be too quick to endorse a self-touted “good system” or take safety for granted?), or they are largely avoidable in such accidents like bionix vehicle overturning or reversing, heatstroke after a 8km fast march, and crushed by a manually-activated gun barrel.
Let me thus end by saying that if a fish rots from the head down, then a loss of life is one too many, not to mention 5 within 16 months.
Alas, after all’s said, this whole episode may not just be about lowering training tempo, but about examining leadership ego.
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