The military is working on measures to help it achieve its goal of recruiting enough soldiers for this year ahead of the government’s plan to turn the military into an all-volunteer force by 2016, a military spokesman said on Tuesday.
Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) said the ministry would work with related agencies to promote recruitment and other complementary measures to persuade more young people to join the military.
Colonel Hu Chung-shih (胡仲適), who is in charge of military recruitment, said that the ministry aimed to recruit 15,311 people last year, but only managed to enroll 11,069, or 72 percent of its target. The goal for this year is to recruit 28,531, but in five rounds of tests so far, it has been successful in getting only 4,290.
Major General Pai Chieh-lung (白捷隆), who is in charge of resource planning in the military, said the ministry had decided to loosen the requirements for candidates and to increase the number of female soldiers in a bid to meet recruitment targets.
The number of candidates are expected to increase in the second half of the year because many young people graduated from schools in June, Pai said.
Pai added that the nation would need some time to switch its mandatory military service system to an all-volunteer force. It took France five years to transform into an all-volunteer force, and Taiwan has only been going in this direction for a little more than one year, Pai said. He said that there will have been 17 more rounds of recruitment by the end of next year.
“We have set a high goal and hope to achieve it as early as possible,” Pai said.
The nation wants to build a leaner and meaner military of 215,000 volunteers after 2015 in place of its current force of about 240,000 volunteers and conscripts. However, the recent death of an army corporal has probably put a damper on the desire of young people to join the military.
Hung Chung-chiu (洪仲丘) died of heatstroke early last month, just days before his mandatory military service was due to end, after undergoing rigorous exercise while in confinement for a military transgression.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus yesterday said it opposes the introduction of migrant workers from India until a mechanism is in place to prevent workers from absconding. Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on Thursday told the Legislative Yuan that the first group of migrant workers from India could be introduced as early as this year, as part of a government program. The caucus’ opposition to the policy is based on the assessment that “the risk is too high,” KMT caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) said. Taiwan has a serious and long-standing problem of migrant workers absconding from their contracts, indicating that
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