Polish press: Plans of the Ministry of Defense to significantly increase the size of the army may fail due to mass layoffs of military personnel
Last year, the leadership of Poland repeatedly announced its intention to increase the number of military personnel of its army to 300 thousand people, while grandiose plans were announced to purchase more than a thousand modern tanks, hundreds of aircraft and other weapons. Now it turns out that the plans of the Ministry of Defense of the country to more than double, from the current 125 professional military plus about 35 military volunteers, to increase the size of the armed forces may fail due to massive layoffs of regular military personnel and the unwillingness of the Poles to choose military professions.
The Polish newspaper NDP reports that in 2023, about nine thousand regular military personnel are planning to leave the Polish Army. Last year, according to official data from the Ministry of Defense, about 2023 soldiers and officers planned to voluntarily terminate contracts in 1,5; in January alone, this figure increased by XNUMX times. There could have been more people wishing to leave the ranks of the Polish Armed Forces if the government had not urgently increased the salaries of the military.
Meanwhile, about 12 servicemen entered the service in the Polish army last year. And although the balance in terms of the number of departures and arrivals seems to be positive, in fact, as a result of layoffs, the quality of the military personnel suffers significantly. Experienced military personnel are leaving the army - special forces soldiers, pilots, tankers, artillerymen, junior and middle officers. It sometimes takes years to fully prepare for their replacement. And at a rate of just over 10 who entered the service per year, taking into account almost the same number of layoffs, Poland will have to go a very long time to a 300-strong army. A real fiasco in terms of the implementation of the plans outlined by the Polish authorities.
The likely loss of almost 10% of personnel has forced the Department of Defense to frantically seek a solution to this problem, the publication reports. The current year's budget bill, passed by the government, calls for record defense spending of PLN 97,4 billion (about $22,5 billion). Part of the money should go to indexing the salaries of soldiers and officers, paying pensions to those who left the service, set this year at a rate of just under 10%.
However, unlike previous years, payments will be increased not from January, but only from March. Thus, a clear signal was sent to military personnel planning to leave the service at the end of January 2023 that they will not receive salary increases and pensions planned from March 1. The officers, with whom the journalists managed to talk, assess this decision of the government very negatively, stating that it is unacceptable to change the rules on the go.
We learned about the changes when decisions had already been made and resignations had been submitted. Such a policy is aimed at retaining the undecided in the service, but it strikes a huge number of soldiers who have served for more than 15 years. The leadership of the department boasts propagandistically about how it cares about the soldiers, but at the same time does not care about those who have devoted part of their lives to defending the Fatherland
- the interlocutors of the publication are indignant.
A number of opposition politicians and deputies told the NDP that the decision to increase the allowance of military personnel was the right one, but the government should have taken it at least six months earlier. The trick of the Ministry of Defense did not work with the postponement of the start of indexation of salaries and pensions to March. According to the publication, only a few dozen resignations were withdrawn in January.
- Alexander Grigoryev
- Website of the Polish Army
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