Claim to shed 50,000 Army troops bogus: PPP

"The much-trumpeted claim of reducing numerical strength of the Army and rationalising military spending by sending back all combat soldiers working as batmen to their operational duties by the end of this year is bogus, and a sleight of the hand", said PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar here on Sunday.
He reminded that the decision to shed 50,000 troops has also been accompanied with the decision to replace combat soldiers as batmen with a new cadre called non-combatant bearers to be employed on contract.
"If the combatant troops, at present, employed as domestic servants of generals are to be sent back to their units and remain on the pay roll of the military and at the same time a new division of domestic servants is also to be raised it will only increase and not decrease the military expenditure", he said in a statement.
Senator Babar said that with the new decision the actual military budget will increase to the extent of expenditure on raising the additional cadre for polishing the boots, pressing the clothes and performing other domestic chores for the officers.
It is not 'cutting the tail' as is claimed but further elongating it by creating a new cadre for the personal and domestic chores of the generals, he said.
The PPP Senator said a similar deception was played when sometime back Rs 27 billion of the pensions of military personnel were wrongly moved to the civil expenditure, and a false claim made that defence budget had been slashed.
Babar said to rationalise defence budget it was important to cut unproductive administrative expenditure on big cars, luxurious houses and messes, servants, entertainment, travel and other perks and privileges.
This calls for cutting the fat at the top and as demanded by an ex-Army chief reducing the number of general officers, he added.
He said it was dangerous that the society was moving towards the direction where the feudal and industrialist is being replaced by the 'Khaki' industrial class.
The example of the Askari Bank giving loans to the scion of a retired Army general for setting up a franchised transport service dispossessing hundreds of poor wagon operators is just one latest example of the trend, he added.
He said that world wide soldiers die young in the battlefield expecting only a medal and a flag to be buried in, whereas in Pakistan, however, even without deaths in battle field, the generals take residential and commercial plots, agricultural lands and subsidised loans.