(source: Sme )
The interest of people in joining the army is dropping, similarly to their quality. Moreover, the number of soldiers leaving for reserve forces is increasing. As a result, the number of active soldiers is decreasing, according to the report on the current state of recruiting soldiers for the armed forces authored by the Defence Ministry.
The army planned to have 16,077 professional soldiers before July 6, 2017, but their actual number was only 12,180. This negatively impacts the system of managing military personnel and fulfilment of tasks for the armed forces, the SITA newswire reported, citing the report.
Back in 2012, altogether 2,417 people applied for the army, out of whom 1,190 (49 percent) met the requirements. Last year, only 1,637 people applied, out of whom 511 (31 percent) met the already lowered criteria. If the original criteria had been kept, the success rate of the candidates would have fallen below 30 percent, the ministry wrote.
In the first half of this year, an 18-percent annual drop in the number of applications for the armed forces was reported. It can thus be expected that the number of applications for becoming a professional soldier in 2017 and the following years will be lower than in 2016, SITA reported.
