Why you are unhappy about National Service

Read this off the website www.therealsingapore.com, URL link here: http://therealsingapore.com/content/why-you-are-unhappy-about-serving-national-service

I tend to agree with this author's opinion on the influx of sponsored scholars from mainly China and other countries. Why bring in such a huge proportion of them, pay for their education when their heart is in their homeland, not ours?

Thus, we Singaporean guys serving NS are actually serving to protect these foreigners, the author muses. And I somewhat agree. Here's the article, copied wholesale from the source mentioned above...PLAGIARISM!! LOL :D

"The issue with National Service (NS) has never been about its duration of two years or two years six months, or about the frequency of the In-Camp Trainings (ICT), or about the annual Individual Physical Proficiency Test (IPPT). Nor is it about it being unfair to Singaporean men.

The crux of the issue is that a growing number of Singaporeans are feeling deliberately excluded from Singapore's prosperity. And they using NS to vent their frustrations.

You are a Singaporean male. You did your two years of NS. When you enter a tertiary institution, you discover that a majority of the students there are not Singaporeans. Many of them are on scholarships paid for by our local tax payers, while your parents had to scrimp, save and maybe take a loan to pay for your educations. And you had to survive two years of NS without getting killed, or injured or maimed before you earned the right to take a loan to pay for your university fees. And thousands of foreigners who don't have to do NS get a free ride. It sucks to be you.

You worked hard, and you finally graduated. You now try to find a job. You find it tough, because many of the hiring managers are foreigners. And despite their public claims that they hire on merit, it turns out that most of them prefer to hire their own kind. If they hire locals, they usually mean Permanent Residents (PR) and not Singapore citizens, especially those who still have ICT obligations. Your friends who found jobs in the Civil Service don't mind ICT, since it doesn't affect their career prospects in the slightest. You try to complain, but most Singaporeans say 'whatever.' They really couldn't care less if you drown in your own puddle of blood. They think this only happens to other Singaporeans. They usually wake up their ideas when they find themselves driving taxis and working as security guards, missing the days when they were once hot shots in their industry.

Eventually, you found a job. You worked hard, neglected your health and family for the job. And you still got fired anyway simply because the new manager is a foreigner, and wants to bring in his own buddies. It is easy to do so, since firing a citizen doesn't break any labour laws, and MOM doesn't have a reputation of taking stern and decisive action against foreigners who hire their own kind. I have yet to read of such foreigners being sent packing back to their home countries. When caught with blatant discriminatory practices, foreigners simply shrug their shoulders and say 'Oops. Typo mistake. Won't do it again.' No foreign hiring manager will be fired.

So, while Singapore prospers, you find yourself increasingly shut out of its wealth. You discovered the hard way that the real reason you did NS, and why your son has to do NS, is to provide a safe and secure environment for foreigners to hire their own kind and exclude Singaporeans from good jobs. Maybe the foreigners will try to meet the Singaporean quota by restricting lower entry jobs to Singaporeans only. But the good stuff will be kept exclusively for their own kind. Not by merit, but by race and nationality and maybe even caste.

You try to complain to MOM. But this is a non-issue. Why should it be an issue? The foreigner who replaced you will pay taxes too. The minister in charge knows the chances of his party losing the elections is very low. So, he and his team of civil servants will continue to draw their good salaries. Aljunied GRC? Punggol-East? Who cares? Nearly everyone else won. And a bad election result for the party is still the best result anywhere in the world of democratic elections. A win of 67% is considered a landslide win by any standards. Tough luck on those unlucky losers who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Next time you want to complain about NS, get straight to the point. It isn't about men versus women. It isn't about Singaporeans versus foreigners. There were foreigners too back in the 1970s and 1980s. But back in those days, after you did your NS and ICT, your job was still safe. There were many good jobs around for Singaporeans.

Now, there aren't. They are mostly reserved for foreigners and their kind. You fear going back for ICT because by the time you got back, your job may be gone. Your annual disappearing act might give the foreign manager a stronger reason to either fire you or no longer hire Singaporeans with NS obligations. There are many ways to do so and get away clean.

Sure, the recruitment ads will now be mostly free from discriminatory practice. And the companies will have to advertise through a government recruitment portal. But you and I know the HR people will only politely
collect your CV but still tell you to go fuck yourself because you are a Singaporean. Worse still, if you are a Singaporean male burdened by NS obligations.

There are many ways to present good paperwork on why Singaporean male graduates from the top local universities in Singapore are less qualified than foreign candidate from some unaccredited or lowly ranked universities from Third World countries. And there is a high chance the candidates from the Third World countries didn't actually earn their qualifications on their own merit. But they will still get the job simply because the hiring managers are their own countrymen. And foreigners who insist on hiring foreigners will not be fired and repatriated swiftly. We now have a system that encourages and rewards such discriminatory practices. Or simply because local bosses prefer 'cheaper, better and faster. And foreign (read as no need to do pesky ICT and RT training.' And that's the real reason why you are unhappy about the unfairness of National Service."