MOSCOW. Oct 10 (Interfax-AVN) - Andrey Nikolayev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee for Defense, says that introduction of the alternative service in Russia requires a dramatic review of reasons for exempting from or postponing military conscription.
"Introduction of the alternative service in Russia requires urgent review of reasons for exempting from or postponing military conscription," Nikolayev told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday.
He noted that many Russian citizens "were granted a postponement from conscription to the military service just because their education, profession, or skills might be best applied in other spheres crucial for both the society and the state."
According to the legislator, "such people include village teachers, village doctors, employees of almost 400 defense industry enterprises, Interior Ministry officials, Emergency Ministry Fire-Fighting Service officers, customs officers, Federal Tax Police officials, and employees of penitentiary establishments."
"These are just the categories of citizens, stipulated for directly by the federal law, Nikolayev said. "However, in addition to the law, there are a number of Russian presidential decrees, which grant citizens with certain professions a postponement from conscription."
"In fact, this is the very alternative service. The precise definition of the alternative service is given in the first paragraph of the first article of the law: the alternative civil service is a special type of employment in the interests of the society and the state, carried out by citizens instead of the conscripted military service," Nikolayev emphasized.
It is obvious that the review of reasons for exempting from or postponing the conscription is a must both from the theoretical and the practical standpoints, the legislator said.
Moreover so that it would be fair towards citizens of those very categories, mentioned above, he said.
"Judge for yourself, Nikolayev clarified, "A young man, who has graduated from a higher educational establishment (22-23 years old), will have to work at corresponding organizations, for instance, as a village teacher, until he is 27. If such work is called the alternative civil service, the same citizen, boasting a college degree, will have to work as a village teacher for only 21 month, i.e. less than two years."