Centre considers National Commission for exservicemen rehab:Pranab

Kolkata, Oct 3 (UNI) Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said the Centre will actively consider setting up of a ''National Commission for rehabilitation of ex-armymen'' in cooperation with the state governments.

He said this after addressing the valedictory session of a National seminar on ''Defence-Industry Partnership in Human Resource Management'', jointly organised by the Directorate General of Resettlement of ex-servicemen and the Confederation of Indian Industry(CII), Eastern Regional Council.

Referring to the absence of any proper monitoring system in terms of arranging suitable jobs for nearly 60,000 army personnel who retire year, Mr Mukherjee said he had received a number of important suggestions from different quarters including the one from Former Chief of Army Staff Gen(Retired)Shankar Roy Chowdhury in which he had suggested establishing a National Commission for proper rehabilitation of ex-servicemen with much greater participation of every state government.

Since ensuring proper and respectable jobs for capable and efficient ex-armymen was also the responsibility of each state government as well as the Centre, a National Commission must be immediately set up to monitor the whole process with everybody's cooperation, the Defence minister, quoting the suggestion from the former Chief of the Army staff, said.

Asked about the progress of the indegenously built first aircraft carrier for the Indian Navy, Mr Mukherjee said the work was progressing as per schedule.

''We hope to induct the bulk carrier in the Navy by July next year,'' he said he also refused to mention about the extent of participation of private partners in the multi-million dollar project Earlier, addressing the seminar Mr Mukherjee underscored the need for proper and timely training of each of the retiring army personnel at least for a year to make them suitable for civilian and corporate related jobs of their choice.

Since armymen are basically trained for defending the nation during wars in their service period, they know very little about the tricks in the present day corporate world, Mr Mukherjee said.

He called for their vigorous training so that they can take up suitable corporate responsibility after retirement. The Defence minister suggested the areas of corporate and personal security as the two most demanding areas for ex-servicemen.

The state government had also a role to perform in this regard along with the private and corporate sector and they must come forward and open up more business avenues for ex-servicemen, Mr Mukherjee said.

Also speaking on the occasion Gen (Retd) Shankar Roy Chowdhury, along with Director General Resettlement Maj Gen Harwant Kishan, GOC-in-C Eastern Command Lt Gen Arvind Sharma and Director Genereal CII and also an ex servicemen Lt Gen(Retd)S S Mehta spoke at length about the present scenario in the army in terms of resettlement of about 60,000 odd exservicemen they suggested several 'menaingful' ways to migitage the growing problem.

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