Professional Development Choices for National Army Staff

CHISINAU, December 20, 2011 — The Republic of Moldova Government assumed the responsibility to modernize the country’s political, economical and social areas, as well as the defense and security sector, Deputy Minister of Defense, Igor Panfile, stated during the roundtable debates “National Army Staff Professional Training”, held Tuesday, December 20, at the Ministry of Defense HQ.

The Deputy Minister of Defense said the topics covered related to the complex missions of National Army are up-to-date. Igor Panfile stated the National Army currently lacks capabilities for carrying out high quality missions and duties highlighted in the strategic documents.

“The public debates on National Army professional development are necessary to make a relevant and complex expertise of professional training options. Building a society within which citizens’ security is a priority should become an essential condition in a state of law”, the Deputy Minister of Defense said.

The State Chancellery representative, Sorin Hadirca, pointed out the public policy proposal is a document containing the results of the analysis of a few problem settlement ideas. Hadirca stated that all the options identified by the experts on professional training of the National Army staff are fair and should be debated.

“The document we have developed points out a few issues. We made a thorough analysis of what is better for the Republic of Moldova: an army based on recruits, a professional army or may be both”, Sorin Hadirca said. “However, the final decision is to be made by the political factors, the Government, people in charge of implementing social policies”.

1^st Lt. Diana Molodilo, Chief of the Department of Policy Analysis, Monitoring and Evaluation of the Ministry of Defense, stated the Ministry of Defense had identified two options for the National Army professional training.

“One of them is to preserve the joint military service gradually changing to contract-based service. In this case, about 70% of all the National Army personnel will be contract-based servicemen, and 30% — active-duty. The second option requiring more budget resources is the one hundred percent transition to the contract-based service by training servicemen in compliance with the modern requirements”, Diana Molodilo stated.

The options identified by the experts for the National Army professional development were analyzed from the fiscal, administrative, economic, social, gender and ecological points of view. The final document will be submitted for examination to the State Chancellery. If the document is approved, the State Chancellery will send it for examination to the Inter-ministerial Committee on Strategic Planning.

At present, 50 percent of the National Army personnel are servicemen and 50 percent are active-duty.