Singapore Armed Forces Volunteer Corps’ 2-Weeks “Holiday Camp”

Earlier in April, the Singapore Armed Forces first batch of Volunteer Corps have completed their two weeks training, a super condensed version of the two years compulsory national service which all Singapore-born males have to go through.

The first batch of 68 volunteers consist of a mix of foreigners from different nationalities and professions as well as some Singaporean girls.

You can read more about their training from these Pioneer magazine scans here:

I already unsubscribed from the magazine long ago and I believe many others might have done so too. To the person who scanned and uploaded the pages, thanks for sharing!

Criticism came fast and furious on the Hardwarezone EDMW forum. Here are some choice quotes:

Wishdom: “It is one thing for us to lament about serving NS. It is another for the government to slap us in our face through this method of “integrating foreigners”.”

Ohayo!: “nothing they do can change the fact that we wasted 2 years”

Lemon_gaga: “they will not feel anything about army if nv tekan by PTI. They shd spent 2 weeks see what sai we have during the 1st 3 months. Volunteer is like go education camp.”

sggirlsareflatchested: “hohoho now cannot say ppl nvr serve ns don’t kp… btw got annual ippt and fail got rt for these volunteers?”

SaintPeachie: “To be fair National Service should be 2 weeks for everyone!”

To be fair, there were also several forummers who praised the volunteers for stepping forward in the first step towards integration.

For me, I think it is a good initiative. Although I think more still need needs to be done to bridge the two years of wasted youth and the ten over years of super long reservist period combined with RT/IPT/IPPT which put Singaporean men at a significant disadvantage in life, this is a good start.

What are your thoughts on this?