SINGAPORE: A TikTok video went viral recently when a man went on a bit of a rant concerning National Service (NS), which is a point of pride for many Singaporeans. For him, however, the two years of NS that Singaporean males are required to serve are a waste of time.
Moreover, he claimed that the S$750 allowance given to full-time national servicemen (NSFs) simply isn’t enough.
“I’ll probably get a lot of backlash for this, but I think it needs to be said, to be honest,” said Sheldon, who goes by @ruggerbud47 on the platform, in his Dec 24 video, which has since gotten nearly 150,000 views and over 400 comments.
The 8-minute and 20-second-long video contained Sheldon’s thoughts on NS.
@ruggerbud47 Sg gov treat your nsf better #sgfyp #sgtiktok #ns #tiktoksg #singaporean
First, he claimed that NSFs do not get paid enough and that, because of inflation, while the actual allowance is higher, their purchasing power is less.
During the time of Sheldon’s officer, NSFs received an allowance of S$450, while they get S$750 today. He used the McSpicy to illustrate his point, saying that during the officer’s time, it cost S$4.50, which meant each recruit could buy 106 McSpicys with their pay. Today, it costs S$9.50 each, which means today’s NSFs can buy only 77 McSpicys with their pay.
More importantly, Sheldon feels that each male going through NS loses two years of their life, which means a lot of lost opportunities. He added that after the first year or so, NSFs don’t necessarily learn anything new.
“After you’ve been vocationally trained and you learn everything you need to do in your job, you’re basically just like an underpaid intern,” he added.
The two years served in NS also puts males two years behind their female peers, which he believes makes it harder to date, since “girls expect their partner to make the same amount or more than them. That’s just like gender norms in general.”
He also wondered why South Korea, for example, which has an active threat at its border, has shorter military training than Singapore, which does not. Even if war comes to Singapore, other countries would support it, he added.
Part of his frustration seems to stem from being more than a year into his NS, but by now, he could be almost ending his uni studies and be getting ready to enter the workforce.
Many commenters agreed with Sheldon and validated his frustrations.
“2yrs unnecessary, at most 1yr,” a TikTok user commented.
“As a fellow international student who also served, I just wanted to let you know that I hear you, bro, and I feel like the frustration is valid… 2nd year of NS was pretty boring to me as well,” another shared.
“Yeah, I lost some opportunities from LinkedIn because of this 3 years ago… To add on, after NS, you might forget a lot of what you have learnt before in JC/Poly/ITE, and right now, the job market is also bad. You might also have to start again from scratch after NS, especially if you’re not from a comfortable, well-off family,” wrote a third.
Others, however, did not see eye to eye with him on certain points.
“I can understand the $$$ concerns, but saying NS is not needed because we have ‘friendly’ neighbours and that the UN will help us is ridiculously naive,” wrote one.
“I agree with you about the allowance part. I’ve gone through it; in fact, I finished my reservist last year, but I don’t agree about cancelling NS because we are a small country. No choice about that,” added another. /TISG
