FROM NOW on, all conscripts will be released a month earlier, as the length of military service is cut to exactly two years.
The bad news is that it spells the end of plans to reform the National Guard, which among other things would have reduced the army stint from 25 months presently to 19 months.
So it’s official: the restructuring of the military has been put in the deep freeze.
A government bill proposing the reduction of the army stint to 19 months, which parents had been waiting for with bated breath, was abandoned after the negative feedback it got inside the House Defense Committee.
All parties, with the exception of AKEL and the Greens, rejected the blueprint, calling it unrealistic.
The bill, drafted by the Ministry of Defence and based on a feasibility study commissioned by it, called for a gradual reduction in military service, the hiring of additional non-commissioned officers and the closure of some army camps.
An officer at the Defence Ministry’s Recruitment Bureau explained that the stint was cut to 24 months only for those conscripts drafted in July of last year. Apparently this was to be on a “trial basis.”
However, after plans for a 19-month service were shelved last month, the Defence Ministry decided to submit a new proposal for a 24-month term, which will apply to all those drafted since last summer.. The proposal has been forwarded to the Cabinet.
Subject to approval by the parliament, the ministry also plans to increase the monthly allowance of conscripts and reserve officers from €102 to €146.
No sooner had the 19-month plan been put on ice than the blame game began. The government said it was forced to pull the plug because of the lack of support. Parties say that’s a cop-out, because being a government bill it did not need parliament’s endorsement.
“They [the government] gave up when they realised their plan wouldn’t work. It wasn’t well thought-out at all,” said Socrates Hasikos, a DISY deputy who sits on the House Defence Committee.
Some of the criticism levelled at the bill was that it would create social problems: the majority of conscripts are drafted in July, so they would be discharged sometime around February, leaving a gap of six months before they could enrol at a university.