Thursday, 19 June 2008, 9:45 am | 2,030 views
There is a saying in my
office: the job of the Military Medicine Institute is to prove that
you don’t have what you say you have. It began as a joke, based on
observations that we have made during our time in Basic Military
Training. Unfortunately, it seems that the statement is truer by
the day.
I
told my colleagues the story of a recruit in my company in Pulau
Tekong. He suffered from severe flat feet. The arches of his feet
would collapse after running for too long, making him highly
unsuitable as a frontline soldier.
He
demonstrated that he had flat foot during his medical check-up. He
even went to a private specialist to confirm his condition. But he
was sent for PES A/B training. It took over a month before he was
officially downgraded and posted out – in the interim, he was
pulled out of training and spent his days sitting in the company
office and running simple errands.
Fiction? I wish. It is
merely just another case of irresponsibility.
The price we
pay
Every time a recruit is
declared ‘Out of Training/Course’ in BMT because of a pre-existing
medical condition that could have been detected but was not, he
would have to be sent for the next BMT recourse that caters to his
actual PES status. All the money heretofore spent on him, from food
to utility bills to ammunition, would effectively be wasted – and
that money comes from taxpayers’ wallets.
Pre-enlistees, too, have
to bear the cost of a medical misdiagnosis. My former company mate
scrambled to have a private specialist to diagnose him with flat
foot, after realizing that the doctors at the Central Manpower Base
would send him for PES A/B BMT. Armed with this documentation, he
proved to his superiors that he should be medically downgraded, and
was declared OOT from the third day.
Had he not consulted his
specialist, there is a very high chance that he would have suffered
feet injuries before the MMI realized its mistake. But it is absurd
that he had to pay a private specialist to perform a service that a
military doctor could, and ought to, have done just as competently,
and for free. Private specialists charge steep prices; should a
pre-enlistee with a medical condition be unable to afford a
specialist, and be wrongly classified during his preliminary
medical check-up, he would be in for a spell of bad luck and
trouble. And the SAF would then have to pay for his
treatment.
Worse still is the effect
on the recruits’ health. One of my colleagues has scoliosis,
curvature of the spine, and was sent for PES C BMT. The simple act
of carrying his military and civilian clothing and equipment to his
bunk injured his spine, and he had to be excused from carrying
heavy loads. It should have been a given, considering his back
problem, but nothing in the SAF seems to exist unless it is
officially documented in triplicate.
A
few months later, he was ordered to wear a fully loaded Load
Bearing Vest to the live-firing range for nearly the whole day,
further aggravating his injury. He now has to perform personal
physiotherapy every other hour, courtesy of several slipped discs,
and can only sleep on a waterbed because regular ones would
aggravate his condition. Here, the SAF has to spend time to process
his injury report – his case stretches back to December 2007, and
has yet to be resolved – and determine if he was eligible for
compensation. A medical board is being convened to determine if he
should be downgraded to PES E9L9, the lowest grading a serviceman
may get before being discharged on medical grounds. The result:
even more time and money spent to rectify something that could have
been prevented.
Perhaps the most
debilitating of all is the effect on the morale of affected
servicemen. My colleague now bears a grudge against his former
commanders, refusing to refer to them without using unprintable
vulgarities. Every serviceman who had had to turn to a private
specialist because the military doctors have failed in their job
would lose his faith in the MMI, because of that failure, and would
have judged it rightly. Left unchecked, the negative attitude that
emerges from each lapse would extend to embrace the SAF in its
death grip. Indeed, to the disaffected, ‘SAF’ is an acronym for
four words. The first two is ‘serve and’, and the last is ‘off’. I
will leave you to speculate what ‘F’ means.
Should his ennui be
entrenched by future incidents, the serviceman would lose any
incentive to do his best while serving his National Service
liability. The efficiency of his unit would then be compromised in
the area he is currently responsible for, be it logistics or
clerical work. From a macro perspective, compounding the negative
effects of each disappointed soldier, the overall effectiveness of
the SAF would be further compromised – and therefore, its ability
to defend Singapore.
The price of every
misdiagnosis and every act of negligence is in the currency of
money, time, operational readiness, and blood. We, the people
of Singapore,
are the only people who can pay for it.
Duties and
expectations
The military sees National
Service through the paradigm of duty. The average citizen, however,
sees it through the paradigm of compulsion. The SAF wants to instil
a sense of loyalty in every serviceman, to have him understand that
National Service is a duty imposed upon all male Singaporeans to
provide for the common defence, because there are too few people to
sustain an army of regular soldiers. But many Singaporeans simply
see National Service as a mechanism that tears their sons,
brothers, fathers, husbands and lovers away from them.
Neither side is wrong. But
their perspectives are irreconcilable. The death of every
serviceman attributed to a military lapse would heighten the
tension between them, and eats away at the military’s core. The
military, in turn, would want to play down the extent of any
lapses, because it – and its political masters – have no desire to
lose the public’s support, which was never significantly high to
begin with. I would not be surprised if stories of cover-ups were
to surface; after all, nobody, least of all a regular soldier,
would want to lose face. Yet this is only a temporary solution at
best. It does not at all resolve the situation.
What should be done is the
recognition of responsibilities on both sides. The military must
recognize that it is a public organization that is mostly staffed
by people against their free will. This restriction of such a basic
human right must be recompensed through a pledge of honour and
professionalism, to develop each enlistee’s potential to the
fullest.
In the event of a lapse,
especially one so severe that it leads to death or injury, the SAF
must spare no effort in investigating its cause and punishing the
guilty, and it must be done as transparently as possible. The
military must aim to minimise the cost of maintaining the SAF,
especially the cost imposed by negligence and misdiagnoses. Nothing
less will do, because the survival of the nation and the honour of
the military rest on the SAF’s shoulders. It is the public’s duty
to urge the government and the SAF to do so, to prevent
bureaucratic inertia from suffocating the investigation, as it is
the public that must bear the cost of military
irresponsibility.
Recognising
responsibilities
Civilians, in turn, ought
to recognise that they must provide for and support the common
defence. Pre-enlistees should realise that only they can defend
their loved ones, because there are not and never will be enough
regulars to do so for them. They should play their part by meeting
the rigours of National Service – servicemen by doing their best,
civilians by supporting them. The legal system assures us that
anybody who chooses to renege on his national duty would be
punished if caught. But it is education, public messages, and the
attitude of the military towards servicemen that would influence
what people truly think of National Service.
The ultimate objective of
this exercise is to reduce the cost borne by the public caused by
negligence and misdiagnoses. When the military recognises its
responsibility and acts professionally, doctors would examine
pre-enlistees more carefully, commanders would care more for their
men, clerks would pay more attention to their work, and so on. The
citizenry would support the military in its task, and take it to
task when needed. This means less public money spent on recourses
and resources, less time wasted for new postings, less blood spilt
and hearts lost by trainees, and a lower chance that the SAF,
should it be needed, would be found wanting.
In times of peace, sons
bury their fathers. In times of war, fathers bury their
sons.
Let us hope that it
becomes so.
—————–
The author wishes to remain anonymous.
