Radio Erena: 20 October 2017
Members of the Eritrean national defense forces are reported to be facing critical condition due to lack of rations as widespread corruption scandal by their commanders looms.
According to reports from Radio Erena sources, the defense forces have been supplied with food rations and other basic necessities insufficiently over the past two years.
The 29th and 30th national service graduates, noted the sources, who have just been deployed to their permanent regiments following the completion of their pre-deployment assignments in the dam construction projects, are reported to be affected the most.
As the supply of ration still lacks and while the Eritrean government claims to have signed an executive order to increase the compensation of all forces, the members of the defense forces remain to be distressed for not being able to support their families.
The higher commanders, on the contrary, are allegedly being involved in various forms of corruption scandals – corruptions that range from selling the government-supplied rations – to trading contraband goods – to even running human trafficking businesses, underlined the sources.
Most of these commanders, whose families live either in government-commissioned mortgage houses or in government repossessed houses or in houses they had built with the help of free labor from the defense forces, are immune from higher rents and cost of living that most Eritreans have been facing.
The Eritrean youth have been fleeing their country in droves due to the distress caused by endless national service, harsh human rights abuses and a series of corruption scandals by government officials and commanders of the armed forces.
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