Peace corps 'milking' defence

2005-02-24 12:46

Erika Gibson

Pretoria - The government should cover the full budget for the training, upkeep and deployment of peace troops in Africa instead of only making an "allowance" for it in the defence budget.

Reacting to the defence budget announced on Wednesday, Helmoed-Römer Heitman, military analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly, said by partially making provision for peacekeeping and then having to "pilfer" money from the defence force's training and maintenance budget, would eventually cost human lives.

The defence force will receive only R300m a year over the next three years for the deployment of peace troops, while the real expense would be more than R500m a year. Heitman said this would lead to the defence force not having enough money for proper retraining, field exercises and flight hours to maintain its soldiers' conventional skills.

He believed the defence force should learn to say no when it was unable to handle a task, instead of continually "milking" its internal budget.

"Initially only 10 soldiers would have been deployed to Sudan. Overnight the number was increased to 300, without more money being allocated.

"The defence force doesn't need less money for peacekeeping, but more, because peacekeeping is an additional task."

General Major Len le Roux, now retired, of the Institute for Security Studies believed it was partially the defence force's own fault it was not getting enough money.

"The defence force has done very little during the past three years to improve its internal efficiency, such as getting rid of the 214 generals.

"There is also no sign of the revised defence overview, which determines the policy and therefore also the budget to put the policy to practice.

Advocate Pikkie Greeff of the SA National Defence Force Union welcomed the R1.6bn for the improvement of staff benefits.

He said: "The defence force would have to prioritise very carefully and start at the salaries of the bottom ranks before appointing more generals."

- Beeld