Originally posted by Fingolfin_Noldor:
Well, it has been pretty obvious for years that you don't have malays in certain vocations, and many are simply siphoned off to the Civil Defence or Police.
Interestingly enough, certain depts in MINDEF have few of the minorities, if any at all.
Originally posted by beavan:
well, dun flame me for this
but most singaporeans just want to slack off their NS life, so many would be very happy to just be posted to becoming drivers. maybe malays feel the same way too?
That Malays are not present in many departments is common knowledge. What I meant was, "How do you, Beavan, know the Malays don't mind being discriminated against in SAF?"
The Malays who have the qualifications to make officer, certainly don't fit this slacker image that you have of SAF NS men.
Even the Malay Pte and Lcpl in my PDF reservist platoon, didn't fit this slacker image. Certainly not the Malay Sgt Sec Cmd. The whole battllion was made up of many former drivers, cooks and storemen. These were "slacker" jobs. If I were a storeman I, too, would be a slacker cos these jobs creates this attitude.
But everyone, especially the 5 Malays in my platoon, were proud to be riflemen at last, and morale and performance was incredibly high amongst everyone.
Apart from the rest periods where the different races congregate amongst themselves, otherwise the Bengs, the Mamas and the Mats all worked together like brothers.
One Malay reservist trooper in my platoon was suffering from piles during a 1 week Tekong deployment excercise. It involved building defences and making nightly patrols and assaults. He kept mum about his condition cos he "didn't want to be sent home". His condition was reported to the PC by his fellow Malay buddy and he was ambulanced out.
"Slack their NS life?" Jeez...
The distrust may really exists (or not)... But in a well-led and high morale combat unit - even a 2nd line unit like ours - the Malay soldier can be as good as anyone.
