Around 1000 women apply to join Fiji Military

Transcript

The Republic of Fiji Military Forces has been inundated with about 1,000 women applying to be a part of their Territorial Force.

The Land Force Commander Colonel Sitiveni Qiliho says the applications came in answer to a new recruiting campaign following a review on the number of females in the military.

Colonel Qiliho says the women would at times be called in to replace the regulars who were chosen for peacekeeping.

He also says there is now a requirement from the United Nations that 10 per cent of troops deployed for peacekeeping missions be made up of females.

The Colonel told Koro Vaka'uta it's been a while since the last recruitment targetting women.

COLONEL SITIVENI QILIHO:  The first recruit of females into the RFMF happened on the 5th of February 1998 and now the RFMF has reviewed its female manning and we need the females, especially in regards to our UN Peacekeeping deployment.  There's a requirement of the UN for female peacekeepers as well.  Our duties in Iraq require female searchers and a few years after 1988 we took in more females but after a review we see that we need more females now in order to sustain our operations both in our UN peacekeeping and also here in Fiji.  So we are looking at taking approximately 100 females for this recruitment and we had an overwhelming response from the young females of Fiji.  We were inundated with a lot of applications, over a thousand, for the 100 vacancies that we are looking at so we are going through the process right now of interviews and in a few weeks time they should be in for basic recruit.        

KORO VAKA'UTA:  What sort of roles have they been recruited for or is it just generic across the board?

CSQ:  It's generic across the board but like I said our UN Peacekeeping deployments require that we have females to do those duties in particular, female searchers.  They are the duties like other militaries do that require females to be amongst us to carry out those duties.

KV:  Just to clarify.  You mentioned that you had a thousand applicants.  How long have you been trying to recruit this hundred vacancies.

CSQ:  No.  This was just advertised two weeks ago and we received over a thousand applicants for the hundred vacancies we are looking for.