Plans to phase out conscription and implement an all-volunteer military will almost certainly be pushed back to at least 2017, not just postponed to next year, Ministry of National Defense officials said yesterday.
Deputy Chief of General Staff for Personnel Lieutenant General Hsu Yen-pu (徐衍璞) said that if a 90 percent recruitment goal cannot be met next year, conscription would likely be kept for 2017.
The ministry has seen a steady growth in the number of eligible men and women signing up to be career soldiers, “so the number of people called up for conscription will be less in the future,” Hsu said.
“We will assess the numbers at the end of the year to monitor changes to meet the requirements, but the trend will be for less conscription soldiers in the coming years,” he said.
“To meet the nation’s defense and security needs, we will call up 23,100 eligible males born before 1993 for conscription next year,” he said, adding that the number is much less than the 58,615 people called up this year.
Establishing an all-volunteer military, consisting entirely of career soldiers, is considered one of President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) most important pledges.
According to high-ranking officials who asked not to be named, many generals and others in the top echelons of the military are opposed to phasing out the national conscription system, which is part of a plan initiated last year by then-minister of national defense Yen Ming (嚴明) to downsize the armed forces.
According to the program, the combined armed forces was to be reduced from 275,000 to 215,000 by the end of last year, then further trimmed to about 170,000 to 190,000 between this year and 2019.
The program aims to recruit about 10,000 career soldiers from this year to meet troop requirements.
The ministry’s rush to fulfill the all-volunteer plan and other aspects of the program has led to troop deficiencies, with the most acute personnel shortage being among marine corps, the army’s armored brigades, mechanized infantry units, artillery brigades, air force anti-aircraft artillery units, navy warship crews, along with coast guard troops stationed on front lines and outlying islands, reports said.
Commenting on the Presidential Office’s remarks that the all-volunteer military plan is being postponed because the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) had already shortened the length of military service, Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that the government was being irresponsible.
“Ma has been in power for more than seven years; the government has had sufficient time to think and to execute its policy,” Tsai said.
Additional reporting by Loa Iok-sin
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