CONDOMS are among the promotional items being purchased by the Ministry of Defence to promote Slovakia's professional army. The ministry plans to buy 20,000 prophylactics, which have previously been distributed during events where the army has held recruitment centres, the SITA newswire wrote.
The Defence Ministry also intends to put its logo on about 12,000 airbeds and a similar number of sunshades. Fans of the armed forces as well as the outdoors can get branded sports backpacks, multifunctional pocket knives, thermos flasks or torches with LED diodes. Other promotional items will include two- and one-gigabyte USB flash drives, CD cases and mouse-pads. Memorial coins are also planned, to be distributed as part of the promotion by the Slovak Army chief of staff and his deputy. Each of them should get 3,200 pieces. The senior non-commissioned officer of the Slovak armed forces will get 2,000 memorial coins.
According to the official public procurement bulletin, the Defence Ministry wants to spend more than Sk20 million (€0.65 million), excluding VAT, on promotional items by the end of 2011.