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Leave in the army by law cannot be forfeited, says RFMF acting Commander and chief of staff Colonel Aziz Mohammed.
“Leave in the army by law is of right. It’s the right of every officer and soldier to enjoy leave. Leave is of right and cannot be forfeited whether you have a day or 100 days of leave, the law does not permit forfeiture” he told FijiLive.
“The PSC has no function or say in how the RFMF is to exercise its leave provisions. PSC regulations do not govern the RFMF, hence they have no say in the way we manage our leave.”
Colonel Aziz said the practice of leave compensation is not new.
“This has been done since the inception of the forces. There have been times when officers and soldiers have been compensated for the leave where officers and soldiers had wanted to go on leave but due to their commitments in the force they have been recalled or they were not able to go on leave. Hence they were compensated.
“Since 1978 the RFMF has been participating in numerous peacekeeping missions … we were in Lebanon, Sinai, Iraq, and East Timor. With the number of service personnel we had in the army, turnover from one mission to another is very quick. We had some officers and soldiers coming back and staying in Fiji from 3-6 months when they were rotated back into a mission. For them having the opportunity to be in Fiji and take leave was not there.”
Colonel Mohammed said they made the decision to compensate the officers who have gone out of the military on secondment.
“We made the decision to ease the burden of the RFMF. We took it as an opportunity that if we pay these officers, and at that time when we did the payment, we would be saving money - there was a five per cent pay reduction.
“We should not be accumulating leave but the exigencies of service in the RFMF were such that we had to do that. Unfortunately we had allowed this to happen … we should have stopped it a long time ago. We have taken remedial actions to stop accumulation of leave. And the payment is one way of trying to rectify this problem. Another way is we are trying to send service members on leave.”
Colonel Mohammed said he had been liaising with the Auditor-General about the issue.
“We have had three meetings already. They have indicated to us the documents they want. And we will meet next week to go through the files and submit to them all the remaining documents.
“We have nothing to hide, we will be very transparent. We will show them everything we have done. In fact, we will go to the extent to show them all the documents in the personal files of the commander, some senior officers and some other ranks in the military who have been paid.”
He said all the funds paid for outstanding leave was coming from within the budget. “There will not be any extra provision from the Government.”
Full Interview
