The Times - 17 March - Reservist sacked by MoD
By A Correspondent
A TERRITORIAL Army soldier has been dismissed by the Ministry of Defence for answering the call-up papers that it sent to her.
Private Jenny Long, 20, was a driver at an army depot in Bicester, Oxfordshire, when she got the call to join the regulars in Kuwait last month. She asked a senior officer to sign her release papers, but was told she would be given two weeks’ unpaid notice and her job would not be held for her return. When she complained, the MoD said that it had no obligation to preserve her job.
Private Long, who is in Kuwait with the 1st Armoured Brigade, said that she got her job at the Defence Storage and Distribution Agency because she was a Territorial. Now she has given up her rented home in Oxfordshire and moved to her parent’s house in Hull.
“It is extraordinary to think that I can be given a job by the MoD and then they sack me for agreeing to go to a war that they have insisted I sign up for,” she said.
An MoD official said last: “If there has been any sort of mistake, it should be put right and she should get her job back.”
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The "senior officer" who refused to sign and gave her notice should be put on the next plane out and made to do the job himself.
