VIEWS

Volunteering through the Army?

Several times so far the condition of the volunteering in Macedonia has been disputed on the pages of “Civil world”. I also remember the panel discussion on the same theme on the last year NGO fair. Almost all the disputes finished with consensual agreement about the usefulness and the need of volunteering and with several suggestions for promotion and popularization of this sort of voluntary undertaking in the three sectors: public, business and civil.

When recently I started doing my military duty in a civil service in a public institution from the social sphere in Skopje, I realized that there is another possibility for promotion of the volunteering, for which I haven’t heard so far:

Namely, the actual Law of defence enables the recruits who from some religious or moral beliefs (“objection of the consciousness”) do not want to do their military duty with weapon, to do the service without weapon or in a civil service. Even though doing the military service in this way lasts for ten months (compared to the serving in the army which lasts six months), still, more and more recruits choose the civil service.

The Law of defence foresees that the civil doing of the military service can be done in health, humanitarian and social organizations and institutions and fire departments, assigned by the Government. Each of these institutions or organizations suggests the working places, as well as the kind and size of work assignments meant for the people who do their military duty in a civil service, for which they also receive agreement from the Government.  The Law determines that the obligation for paying the expenses for the accommodation and the food for the people in the civil service is to the Ministry of Defence.

The frame set by this law offers more possibilities which, from different reasons, are not fully used, contrary to the often-repeated agreement that the voluntary labour is needed.

 Namely, the public institutions and the civil organizations which have acquired an appropriate permission from the Government could use, for themselves, free labour for completing certain work assignments and, in that way, to make savings in their working. This is very significant for the civil organizations which are constantly facing the question of maintenance. At the same time, the young people who do their military duty in a civil service would gain practical experience, new cognition and, if they are successful in completing their work assignments, with recommendations, which can be useful in their further employment.

The effects would be bigger if the public institutions and the civil organizations try to present the possibilities of the civil doing of the military service directly at the faculties, high schools or youth organizations. Description of the working place, including the work assignments, the necessary qualifications, as well as the experience and the cognition that can be gained, might attract a considerable part of the recruits. In these efforts the Ministry of Defence should certainly be included, whose board is responsible to direct the recruits in a certain institution/organization, depending on the needed qualifications and capabilities.

Finally, the satisfaction of the people that served their duty from the engagement and the acquired experience and, especially, from the improving of their possibilities for employment, would be the best promotion and a commercial for the volunteering among young people.

Is this possible, is this realizable? I don’t know, but what I know is that it is a possibility or a chance to make things better.

I’m not very well acquainted with the football, in fact, I’m not interested in it at all. But, I know that the team that gives more goals wins, and not the one with more chances.

Are we using sufficiently the chances that already exist?

 

(the author is a project-assistant in MCIC)

Vladimir Lazovski