streets
The Ministry of Defence has been asked to stop cutting jobs, reports Rehana Rossouw
PARLIAMENT has asked the Ministry of Defence to freeze its job-cutting until plans are in place to prevent thousands of unemployed troops being forced on to the streets and into crime.
The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has already warned that close to 6 000 personnel could go this year, following hefty cuts in defence spending.
The axe will fall on troops on short-term contracts – those employed for less than four years -which means none is entitled to the cushion of retrenchment packages.
Already, hundreds of young men trained in the use of arms during the struggle against apartheid – especially members of former self-defence units – are said to have swelled the ranks of South Africa’s crime syndicates.
The chair of Parliament’s portfolio committee on defence, Tony Yengeni, said this week the committee wants a strategy to ease the hardship of unemployment, and to calm fears that those axed will gravitate to crime when their paypackets stop.
“We have asked the Department of Defence to stop interfering with people on two-year short-term contracts until a clear and agreed policy of rationalisation is in place,” Yengeni said.
“Unless we have clear guidelines, we are all going to suffer the consequences of abruptly severing them from the SANDF.”
Yengeni said the committee is also concerned that the burden of the staff cuts would fall primarily on people on short- term contracts, many of whom are members of non-statutory armed forces – Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (Apla).
The defence budget was slashed by a further R700-million in February – an unplanned cut which took the total cut in the 1996/97 allocation to R1,47-billion. This has forced the Defence Ministry to review personnel numbers and planned military hardware acquisitions.
Figures provided by the SANDF this week show that of the 27 198 soldiers on two- year contracts, 11 745 are members or former members of MK and Apla.
A defence representative said those on such contracts had less than seven years’ experience in their former armed forces and were younger than 27.
The maximum term of service in this system is six years. But most soldiers are put on medium-term contracts after the short-term contracts expire, in which they serve between five and 10 years in the SANDF.
Yengeni said the staff cuts have to start soon, and the defence committee is hoping to work out severance guidelines within the next month.