Law and Discipline Online | Plugging the "Loophole" of Arbitrarily Assigning Fatigue Duties
In the early days of summer, the sun shines bright. On the training ground of a certain station under the Naval Aviation University, soldiers of a certain company are practicing the breakdown movements of bayonet drill. Shouts ring out one after another; by the end of each set, fine beads of sweat have appeared on every forehead.
"Training now proceeds according to plan, with no instances of personnel missing or skipping training sessions." During a break in training, Squad Leader Liang could not help but reflect that, for a period of time before, even a complete, uninterrupted drill session like this had been a rarity.
On one occasion, soldiers were training at a critical point when the company duty officer came running over to call a halt: "Headquarters has notified us—a higher-level unit needs to clean out a storeroom and wants some soldiers to help move things." By the time the fatigue detail returned, the original training subjects had been thrown into complete disarray, and the soldiers who had gone to help were forced to make up the missed training during rest time. Privately, everyone could not help but grumble.
The situation came to a head during a comprehensive inspection, when the inspection team found that the company's actual number of personnel in training fell far short of the planned number. Upon investigation, they learned that shortly after training had begun, a certain department at headquarters had called and demanded that soldiers be sent to clear weeds from the airfield. Political Instructor Wu, who was organizing the training, had no choice but to release some soldiers to go and help.
"Relevant regulations clearly stipulate that temporary notifications and fatigue duties requiring implementation at the grassroots level must be approved through proper channels, issued by the duty commander, and disseminated through the duty office as the single point of coordination. Headquarters functional departments directly issuing fatigue duty demands to grassroots units not only violates regulations but also disrupts the work and training rhythm at the grassroots level, giving rise to the 'five excesses' problem (五多问题)." The inspection team immediately placed the matter on the agenda of the station commander's office meeting.
In subsequent research, the station's Party committee found that this situation was not an isolated case. "It's all work for the station—it's hard to turn any of it down," recalled a political instructor from one company, who said that during that period he dreaded receiving calls from headquarters. "When headquarters departments ran into temporary tasks or rush jobs, they would often call the grassroots companies to ask for people. Sometimes a single company would receive calls from two or three different departments in one day assigning work. We were caught in an impossible position."
Seizing on this as an opportunity, the station quickly formulated management regulations for fatigue duty assignment and established clear requirements for the dispatch of fatigue duties. "Now we try to handle what we can ourselves, and for things where we genuinely need help, we apply through proper channels, so that officers and soldiers can put all their energy into training and preparing for war," one headquarters cadre acknowledged frankly. After the new regulations took effect, no one casually picks up the phone and demands personnel the way they used to. Each afternoon, headquarters departments submit their fatigue duty requirements for the following day to the duty office, which consolidates them into a unified dispatch plan, submits it to the duty leadership for review and approval, and then notifies grassroots units in advance. Grassroots companies may only arrange personnel to report for duty after receiving the unified dispatch order.
To safeguard order at the grassroots level, the station has made clear that grassroots units have the right to refuse temporary fatigue duties that have not been issued by the duty commander and disseminated through the duty office as the single point of coordination. "Our company has a lot of new soldiers—before, fatigue duties always fell on us. Now the duty office allocates them fairly, and there will never again be a situation where soldiers' training and rest time is arbitrarily occupied," one soldier remarked with feeling.
Today, on the training ground, the shouts of training ring out louder than ever, and soldiers throw themselves into training and preparing for war with undivided attention.