Number of military generals holding ceremonial posts to be slashed in 3 years
Defence Minister Sutin Klungsang intends to encourage generals holding ceremonial posts of specialist to enter the early retirement programme so that the number of generals in the armed forces could be lowered from 2,000 to 1,600 within three years, the Defence Ministry said on Thursday.
Jirayu Huangsup, spokesman of the Defence Ministry, said Sutin would implement the policy of streamlining the armed forces by reducing the number of generals holding unnecessary posts by more than 50% within three years.
Currently, there are some 2,000 generals in the armed forces and about 1,300 of them hold commanding and other key positions while about 700 are appointed as specialists, or ceremonial posts.
Jirayu said Sutin wanted to reduce the generals in the group of 700 specialists to just about 300 in three years.
The spokesman said the defence minister also planned to reduce the number of those holding the post of senior colonel, which is a transitional rank to the rank of major-general, by 570 positions.
He said the reduction would be carried out via an early retirement programme, which would be submitted to the National Defence Council for endorsement before it would be sent to the Cabinet for approval within this fiscal year.
The spokesman said each general who volunteers to enter the early retirement programme would receive a compensation of about 700,000 baht, depending on their rank and length of military service.
Jirayu said the earlier retirement programme would definitely attract the attention of generals in non-commanding posts.
He added that the early retirement programme from 2014 to 2018 was joined by 26,000 military officers so the new programme would definitely be welcomed by generals.
