Major Ntele Ntoi
By ‘Mantoetse Maama
MASERU — The Lesotho Defence Force (LDF) has released some recruits after authorities found that they were over-qualified for their positions, while others were considered not healthy enough to undergo training.
The LDF Public Affairs officer, Major Ntlele Ntoi, said this is an ongoing process so they don’t have statistics of those who were sent home.
“When we advertised the post we made it clear that we want people with Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC), not beyond or below that qualification.
“So we later learned that some of the people we have recruited have other qualification besides the COSC,” Ntoi said.
“We need people who are in the same level so that they will develop together. When we invite applicants we have a budget for them and they will be paid for the advertised position,” he said.
He said in the military services they need people who are honest and in this case recruits who did not declare all their qualifications were dishonest.
“The nature of our job needs people who are honest. In the past we had cases where people sued the LDF as they claimed that they were underpaid. We had to lose focus on our main duty to attend the cases,” he said.
“Some of these recruits had health problems and in the military we have strenuous trainings which people who have health problems might not be able to cope with.
“We train long hours unlike in other fields where people work for eight hours,” he said.
He said in the military their training is based on the challenges they have experienced in the past.
“We had attacks at the ministers’ homes, the prime minister’s home and even at our barracks so this means we will base our training on the type of challenges we had before so it could not be easy for people with health problems.
“During training people push very hard so that we could establish whether they can cope. The training can become mentally and physically strenuous,” he added.
He said some were pregnant and the training might cause some complications adding that the decision to release the recruits was made after the investigations.
