MOSCOW. Feb 5 (Interfax-AVN) - Existing bills on alternative service differ mainly in the term of such service, Eduard Vorobyov, member of the State Duma lower house of Russian parliament, has said.
"There are four bills. The first was drafted by a group of Duma defense committee chairman Andrei Nikolayev, the second by my group, the third by lawmaker Vladimir Semoyonov, and there is also a bill that was submitted by the General Staff, but the government proposed the military to revise it," Vorobyov said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda published on Tuesday. The term suggested by the bills is four, three or two years.
The Defense Ministry should have nothing to do with recruitment for alternative service, the lawmaker said. "A local office of the Labor Ministry fixes the deadline for the alternative serviceman's arrival at the place of service. A report on the person's arrival must be returned in three days. If the person fails to show up, a criminal case will be opened against him, like against an average deserter," he said.
"Alternative service is not servitude or punishment, and it must not humiliate the person. However the alternative serviceman works where he is ordered, not where he wants, and he is not allowed to reject low-paid dirty jobs that he is offered," Vorobyov said.
"In a couple of months the constitutional right of each conscript to opt for alternative service will finally be embodied into a bill that the government will submit for approval to the State Duma," the paper says.