My friend is an airline pilot. He went to New Zealand for reservist training. SAF has to reimburse his employee for his high salary.

It is very expensive for SAF to reimburse highly paid people to do ordinary work as a soldier.

What is a better arrangement? My view - reduced reservist active duty to 3 years. We will have 60,000 operationally ready reservists who are below 25 years at any time. These young people are more suitable and they cost much less.

In the event of hostility, we can all all reservists below 40 years for refresher training. They may not be operationally ready, but we already have 60,000 who are ready. We can take time to get the remaining 300,000 older reservists in shape.

The need has not arisen to activate the older reservists for six decades. I hope that it continues this way for many more decades.

Tan Kin Lian