The Ministry of the Interior is working to amend regulations around alternative military service to enhance civil defense resilience, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan (馬士元) said in an exclusive interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) published yesterday.
The ministry is working to increase training days for conscripts and reservists, and establish a third-level agency to institutionalize the Substitute Service Training and Management Center, Ma said.
As part of institutionalizing the center, the ministry hopes to collaborate with universities where enrollment is low to use their facilities and campuses, Ma said.
Photo: Huang Yun-hsuan, Taipei Times
“Alternative service is also a type of military service,” he said.
Since last year, compulsory service in the armed forces has been extended to one year, which includes alternative service, a substitute civilian service managed jointly by the Ministry of National Defense and the interior ministry.
Following regulations within the Act of Military Service System (兵役法), the interior ministry is to increase the basic training period from 15 to 26 days, including training in first aid, civil defense and disaster prevention, he said.
There are about 250,000 alternative service reservists in Taiwan, with the ministry aiming to recall and train 50,000 annually so that those who previously did not receive first aid, civil defense and disaster prevention training could enhance their skills, Ma said.
Additionally, the number of reservist recall training days would be increased from one to five, he added.
The 250,000 alternative service reservists would be recruited by ministries and agencies based on their expertise, with the goal being to be able to cooperate with local offices to assist in large-scale disaster recovery efforts, Ma said.
Defense resilience is not only for wartime, but also for disaster prevention, Ma added.
Taiwan Community Emergency Response Teams (T-CERT) would also be trained to operate decommissioned emergency response vehicles, such as fire trucks and ambulances, he added.
Building “whole-of-society defense resilience” does have some difficulties, Ma said, citing the example of Internet users asking “if war breaks out, should we surrender?”
Although the public should not be naive about war, surrendering without fighting is misguided, as any sort of invasion would have major ramifications for all of Taiwan’s citizens and could tear society apart, he said.
The most important aspect of resilience is deterrence, to ensure that hostile foreign forces know that an invasion of Taiwan would not be easy, Ma said.
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