it just keeps getting worse

this was suppose to be a piece of news that would give me pure joy. but i suppose it came at the wrong time for me.

the defence minister just announced that our NS liability would be cut from 2 1/2 years to just 2 years. And that everybody in the force as an NSF right now would get a pro-rated waiver. for me this means i will ORD on 30 jne 04.

i have got three basic points.

first, that of the deprived income. if i were to go on the 30 june, i would not be able to receive what was supposed to be my last pay check on 10 july, which amounts to 1200 dollars.

and then there is the 21 days of leave planned for july. as of now, i heard i am only going to be compensated for what will remain of my leave if i take leave from tomorrow. which means technically, monetary loss would be double of what my monthly allowance would be like. refer to the previous post if you need to know why this sum of cash is so important to me.

my leave was originally scheduled for 5 july onwards. because i am unable to clear them, i would be reimbursed accordingly. but then they may then proceed to modify my entitlement to a 2-year soldier one and then further deprive me of any compensation. thing is, as a manpower officer, i know the extent an immediate implementation would have on manpower practitioners all across singapore. they would have endless late nights in the next week, trying to reconfigure the leave entitlements of all personnel involved and also to get the ORD documents ready. medical and dental centres all around would be suddenly swamped with ORD check-up demands. surely the policy makers thought about such a domino effect. my usual question to the upper etchelons of leadership in the military -- why do you want to put our own people in a fix when we can already foresee the potential screw-up? can't we put in place an interim period before a start date?

thirdly and most importantly, if there are no allowances made for people like me caught in the middle, it will probably impede existing efforts to eradicate what the incidents in the past year did to tarnish the reputation of mindef and the civil service on a larger scale. the government has publicly admitted that singapore's only natural resource would be its manpower. its people. i would think that if people are singapore's prized commodity, that we would be treated with more decency and dignity. people like me gave their all to the country for the last 2 years of our lives. now having worked hard and about to enjoy the sunset of our service, the country lets us down like this?

the bulk of the people who are affected are the commanders who enlisted in april 2002. are we therefore the sacrificial lambs?

even in the civil service, when people want to resign, they are to give at least a month's notice. if companies were to retrench people, they would either give advance notice and even if they do, they would dish out retrenchment benefits. with this shift in mindef policies, shouldn't the same be done?

sure. a reduction in liability is great news. a rumoured increase in NSF allowance is better. sure they seek our understanding. but who's to understand me? us? but as with king lear's mistimed announcement of his retirement so as to "unburden his crawl towards death", this announcement is untimely to most -- and that's putting it mildly.

my hope is that a compromise can be reached. for people in my shoes to be given a choice to either ORD on 30 june or 4 august in my case. all i ask for is to be given back to me what was originally and morally what we all were made to believe was our rightful entitlement. i do not ask for any more or any less. any problem after that is for me to deal with. that was the deal i knew it to be all along. after 2 years odd, i think it's the least i can expect.