In the article "Ministry of Defence counts retirement benefits and 500 million in fines in defence spending" it says, among other things:
The cost of retirement benefits for soldiers who have already retired to civilian life. This amounts to more than three billion crowns in 2023 alone. The amount supposedly spent on a "modern and efficient army" also includes a fine of 550 million crowns for mistakes in the purchase of helicopters. The Ministry of Defence has awarded several contracts for the supply of about 1,000 multiply overpriced MINIMI machine guns for 1.5 billion. The machine guns are not supplied by the Belgian manufacturer but by a village dealer CB Servis Centrum.
The Ministry of Defence still refuses to provide information on the details of the purchase, especially the unit prices. The dealer supplying the machine guns is said not to want this. Kverulant.org sued the Ministry of Defence for illegal practices and the Municipal Court in Prague upheld its claim. Nevertheless, Černochová again refused to provide him with the information. Subsequently, the Prague 6 court ordered the bailiff to recover the requested information in September 2023. It will be no surprise if the costs of this execution are also included in the country's defence expenditure.
Several paradoxical conclusions emerge from the above. For example, that the more the Ministry of Defence fixates on arms purchases and the more fines it is fined for doing so, the better the defence will be able to meet our commitment to NATO. Or that the more soldiers go into civilian life, the more the state will have to pay retirement allowances and the better our commitment to defence will look on paper. Finally, the more lawsuits the defence loses, the higher the amount spent on defence. There seems to be something rotten in the state... Czech.
P.S.
In the Czech Republic we have a total of 400 generals who cost the state treasury 750 million crowns a year. Most generals come from the army. Between 1998 and 2023, 309 generals. In the police there were 40 generals, 24 in the fire brigade, and 17 in the Prison Service of the Czech Republic. In the customs service, we would find six generals in those 25 years, and four in the BIS.
Active soldiers: 28,000 professional soldiers, 7,090 civilian employees, 1,109 civil servants (2021)
Reservists: 4 000 (AZ, September 2022)
Budget: 111.8 billion CZK
If we divide the current number of soldiers by the number of generals since November 89, would there be a hypothetical 90 soldiers per general? I can imagine the chaos in command and decision making if a serious situation arose. Even the appointment of generals has a corrupt background, with all due respect to the actual soldiers. They show their quality by their actions, not by their ability to earn general's epaulettes. JŠ
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