5 January 2009
Maputo — The Mozambican Defence Ministry has tacitly admitted that, as in previous years, the majority of young people who should register for military service in 2009 will not do so.
Launching this year's military registration campaign in Maputo on Monday, Defence Minister Filipe Nyussi said this year's target is to register 175,000 people.
Under the law on compulsory military service, all Mozambicans, both men and women, are obliged to register for military service in the year of their 18th birthday. People who turn 18 in 2009 were born in 1991, and so were six years old at the time of the 1997 population census.
That census counted 504,893 six years old, the great majority of whom are still alive. Thus the army expects to register no more than 35 per cent of 18 year olds - and in reality, it is likely to register considerably fewer. This is because the registration also covers people up to the age of 35 who failed, for whatever reason, to register in previous years.
There are few sanctions for failing to register. The most significant is that people who have not registered will be unable to obtain a passport.
Nyussi revealed that, since the current government took office in early 2005, 703,189 young Mozambicans have registered for military service. Of this figure, 32,678 were called up for classification and selection tests, but only 9,538 were recruited for their two year spell of conscription in the armed forces.
But in the four year period 2005-2008, over 1.5 million Mozambicans celebrated their 18th birthday (to be precise, again according to the 1997 census figures, there were 1,619,930 people of the relevant ages).
Nyussi declared that military registration "shows the government's commitment to creating the objective conditions so that the Mozambican state has people capable of safeguarding its most noble and legitimate interests".
He claimed that the economic development of a country is closely linked "to its stability and security, which are only possible through a competent and efficient national defence".
The government, he stressed, was concerned with continually building the capacity of the armed forces (FADM), and this involved recruiting "the country's best children" into the ranks of the military.
"We need the best peasants, masons, carpenters and engineers, the best nurses and doctors, the best mechanics, drivers, sportspeople - in short the children of this marvelous motherland who can add value to the FADM and guarantee quality and effectiveness", said Nyussi.
He urged all parents, relatives, friends, and teachers of those covered by the conscription law, and society at large, to cooperate with the government in encouraging young Mozambicans of military age "to comply with their duty of citizenship".
The military registration period terminates on 28 February.
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