Conscripts as well as reservists could be ordered to help fight natural disasters and other calamities, such as oil spills, if a proposal for reform to conscription legislation is passed. The proposal was submitted to Minister of Defence Seppo Kääriäinen (Centre) on Wednesday.
The committee preparing the legislation feels that the use of reservists is justified, because they have been trained at public expense. Pentti Partanen, the head of rescue services at the Ministry of the Interior, is pleased with the proposal. He says that there are many situations in which conscripts and reservists would be needed. These include oil spills, cleaning beaches, searching for missing persons, and cordoning off the scene of an accident.
Partanen notes that military personnel would not be used for rescue work that requires special professional skill in the field. They would be used in tasks that require large numbers of people. "The Defence Forces are also capable of giving help that is not available anywhere else. They have the kind of equipment and tools that others do not have."
Already at the beginning of this month new legislation took effect making it possible to order Finnish conscripts to take part in short crisis management operations abroad.
The committee preparing the bill is willing to exempt Finnish citizens from conscription during peacetime if they have lived abroad for the past seven years and plan to continue to live abroad in the future as well.
The proposal also calls for a change for those who serve as non-combatants: their service would vary between 270 days and 362 days. Currently, all non-combatant conscripts serve 330 days.
The working group also wants to give the Defence Forces the right to conduct drug tests on conscripts.
