THE current funding for the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) should instead be used for a compulsory national service programme, executive chairman of media corporation Citadel Ltd, Louis Lee Sing, said yesterday.

Speaking at a panel discussion on ’A Case for National Compulsory Service’ hosted by Citadel and held at City Hall, Port of Spain, Lee Sing suggested that the two-year programme should initially focus on young people from the East-West Corridor and La Brea to Point Fortin, who are in need of ’very special attention’ following which it should be extended to the whole country. The target group would be males aged 15 to 25 who are not gainfully employed or studying.

’If your only skill is idleness and troublemaking you have to come into the programme,’ he said, adding that there were thousands of illiterate youths who were unlikely to enrol in any of Government’s current social intervention programmes.

’It can be used to right many wrongs and fix what many people believe only policing can fix,’ he noted.

He said the objective of the programme would be to harvest the nation’s human resources to the fullest, and it would develop a cadre of skilled, literate, developed people, and encourage patriotism. Lee Sing added that there would be no military training, such as the use of weapons or hand-to-hand combat, but there would be military discipline.

General secretary of the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha (SDMS) Sat Maharaj, however, slammed the concept of compulsory national service.

He recalled that when former NAR Minister Lincoln Myers ’floated this misguided fascist idea’ some years ago the Maha Sabha mobilised the Indian community in opposition, and stood ready to do so again. He said that beyond the select group of ’national service champions’ of the radio station there were no other calls from the national community for this programme.

’The Indian community rejects outright any suggestion that compulsory national service is an option for our nation,’ stated Maharaj.

He said the motivation behind compulsory national service was hinged on the Government’s inability to properly deal with crime.

’Those that are based primarily in the East-West Corridor, that come out to prey on the rest of the nation, have imprisoned a nation in fear. And now these organisers (of the panel discussion) have a solution designed to make the entire nation pay.’

Maharaj said the intention was to introduce mechanisms for 100 per cent of the population while crime was caused by two per cent or less. He stressed that law-abiding youth should not be ’saddled’ with compulsory national service when they are focused on academics.

Another panellist, National Joint Action Committee political leader Makandal Daaga, said a national service programme should be kept out of Government control, whether PNM or another party.

He explained that, left under Government control, and especially State-funded, there would be stories such as those associated with the Community-Based Environment Protection and Enhancement Programme (CEPEP), where workers were allegedly forced to attend a PNM rally at Woodford Square.