PETALING JAYA: Some 62 operators of National Service Training Programme (PLKN) campsites have either gone bankrupt or are waiting to be declared as such, after bearing huge debts following the abolition of the programme in 2018.
They had failed to repay bank loans after investing up to RM12 million for each training camp, Utusan Malaysia reported.
According to the Malay daily, it is estimated that RM984 million was spent to build the 82 PLKN campsites in the country, most of which are now redundant, even though the government had tried to revive these camps by renting them out to other parties.
Currently, 20 of the campsites are being rented out to the prisons and immigration departments, the police and the army. Five of them are in Sabah and Sarawak.
The other 62 sites are either operating on a small scale or have been neglected.
Othman Yaakob, the owner of the PLKN Eco Millenium campsite at Beranang in Sepang, Selangor, said some owners offered their camps for rent when the programme was abolished, but could not charge profitable rates.
He said there were many campsites in the interior parts of the country that were abandoned and left to rot, despite RM12 million having been spent on each facility.
Othman said the owners spent RM3 million to RM4 million during the first phase of the programme in 2003, up to RM8 million during the second phase in 2004.
He said most of them did not receive any returns on their investments.
Some used around 12ha of their own land to build these camps, he said, only to have them abandoned and neglected.
“We built the camps according to government specifications. There are owners who are in debt until today. Worse, there are some who are bankrupt because they are unable to pay back their loans,” he said.
The PLKN programme was introduced in 2004 by the Barisan Nasional government and abolished in 2018 when the Pakatan Harapan administration took over.
From 2014 to 2018, 15 PLKN sessions were carried out involving more than 900,000 Malaysians aged 18.
