PETALING JAYA, Nov 4 — Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) admit to not having any formal screening mechanisms to weed out possible militants who might take advantage of them, but say this has never been an issue.

Malaysian Relief Agency (MRA) secretary-general Dr Mohd Daud Sulaiman said it has never experienced volunteers abandoning deployment under their existing process in their entire six years of operations.

“Volunteers must attend our induction course before participating in our basic, intermediate and advanced training before we select those who are fit to be deployed. That’s how we identify those we send overseas,” he said.

The process is less rigid with the Malaysian Red Crescent (MRC), where volunteering is open to anyone.

Its deputy chairman Datuk Wira Dr Bahari Abu Mansor said he had not encountered any extremist leanings within their organisation.

“If one of our members actually abandons the group and joins militants while serving overseas, we will think about tightening the existing volunteering process,” he said.

Dr Bahari said the difficult task of being an MRC volunteer, which binds a person to core values of altruism without monetary returns, had deterred those who don’t take the task seriously.

“It’s not a screening process, but you have to understand that it’s not easy for volunteers in MRC. I would say that all our members are pure volunteers,” he said.

The Malaysian Medical Relief Society (Mercy Malaysia) are highly selective with their volunteers, especially when deploying in conflict areas.

Its honourary secretary Raja Riza Shazmin Raja Badrul Shah said Mercy would only deploy senior management staff and board members when it involved high-risk areas.

“We would send core teams which include senior management and board members. If we do take volunteers with us, it would be core volunteers who have been with Mercy for a long time. We don’t take people at random to volunteer outside of the country,” she said.

Raja Riza said new volunteers would be required to work regularly on local relief with Mercy before being considered for overseas deployment.

She assured that no Mercy aid workers had been reported to have joined militant groups and the NGO is not worried about such matter because it is aware of its staff before deploying them.

“If they become staff of Mercy, we would get to know them and would actually recognise any extremist leanings before they are considered to be  to conflict zones,” she said.