Army mulls hiring of more than 8,000 additional paramilitary personnel

By Ronron
October 2, 2007

The Philippine Army is planning to hire about 8,400 additional paramilitary personnel to help in the government’s fight against insurgency, which President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants completed by 2010 when she ends her term.

Army chief Lt. Gen. Alexander Yano said in a television interview Tuesday that the military leadership has already asked Congress to allot budget for the hiring of the additional members of the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) this year and next year.

“We hope that would be granted not only this year, but next year too – the addition of 70 CAFGU companies or a total of about 8,400 personnel,” Yano said on ABS-CBN News Channel.

Yano said the requested budget allocation is for the subsistence allowance of CAFGU personnel, which, at present is P90 per day per personnel.

Yano admitted that the planned hiring of additional paramilitary personnel is related to the goal of the government to crush the insurgency movement by 2010 as ordered by Arroyo.

“We may have some difficulty as far as this (achieving said goal) is concerned if there will be some escalation of hostilities in Mindanao. Definitely, there will be realignment and redeployment of forces from Luzon and the Visayas and this would entail additional forces to maintain our presence especially against the communist insurgents in the Luzon and the Visayas area,” he said.

“But we are trying very hard with the resources available and we have requested in fact some CAFGU companies to augment the regular troops… We feel that with additional CAFGU personnel to augment our forces, this will very much supplement or augment the forces that we have,” he added.

At present, there are approximately 53,000 CAFGU personnel, according to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, Jr., that support the 75,000-strong Philippine Army.

Yano said hiring CAFGU personnel is actually “quite economical” rather than enlisting regular troops to the service since what is given is just the subsistence allowance, and not a salary.

The military says there are about 7,000 armed communist rebels in the country now, much fewer compared to the 1970’s and 1980’s where they number to over 20,000.

Communist insurgency has prevailed in the country in the last 38 years./DMS