Dariga Nazarbayeva announces plans of increasing number of conscripts in Kazakhstani army
ASTANA. Sept 16 (Interfax) - Member of the Kazakhstani Senate and head of the Senate Committee for Foreign Relations, Defense and Security Dariga Nazarbayeva intends to initiate an increase in the number of conscripts in the national army.
"As for defense issues, we on the government have been saying that a large number of young people after school don't enter colleges or universities, don't work, remain unemployed. The statistics in this respect is very poor, approximately 24,000 young people, school-leavers are annually left out of the country's economic and social system. Therefore the issue I would want to raise is to cut the number of contract soldiers and increase the number of conscripts," she said to journalists in Astana on Friday.
This initiative is required "so that young people would get an additional opportunity to serve in the army, learn new skills," she said.
For them this would offer a good start to independent adult life, she said.
In Nazarbayeva's opinion, it is difficult to master the basics of military service in one year; therefore she said the issue of restoring two-year service would be raised.