This was among the very significant topics brought out during the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Personnel (OG1) Family Conference conducted last 13 to 14 March, 2003. The purpose of which is to present the previous years' performance on personnel management by identifying the strengths and weaknesses on personnel management concerns of the line units and by making recommendations, which would become the basis of an action plan. This particular precis is about the need to facilitate the confidence building of 81D personnel.

The holistic approach of the campaign plan "Trinity of War,, acknowledges the protagonists of our war in our fight against insurgency, one of which is "knowing yourself'. To know oneself maybe easy but it can be complicated and dangerous and requires a continuous process. Knowing the men we work with is another thing. In our line of work, we do not have the pleasure of time to really know our men but we have all the means to reach to them. Our personnel are our best assets, if we employ them, we should trust them. Thus, it is important that we should build confidence not just for ourselves but for our men as well. As personnel officers, we are the frontlines in building confidence to our men.

It is one of our primordial responsibilities to create a working environment devoid of deceit and sarcasm. It is therefore timely that we need to facilitate the confidence building of our men. How can we facilitate the confidence building of our personnel, when we find it decreasing? There are a number of things we can do. Recreating our spiritual, psychological, emotional, social and physical stability can create a big difference in confidence building of our personnel. These can be achieved by looking into the morale and welfare, training/ education/schooling, and the benefits that a personnel of this division receives.

On Morale and Welfare. Observations and recommendations on morale and welfare particularly on health services, sports activities, value formation, socials, livelihood programs, and promotions/awards are summarized as follows.

For the previous years, morale and welfare of the troops were given recognition especially to deserving and qualified personnel. Health services were adequately extended and given attention. However, on some instances, reaction time on giving the wounded troop firstaid and evacuating him is slow which causes untimely death due to loss of blood. It may be necessary that the First -aid training administered to aid man focus more on "quick-reaction first-aid treatment". Significantly, platoon leaders should review their request for Call for Air Support procedures.

There were consistent clamor for medical practitioners to be employed in the brigade level since CLSH is too far to administer to the needs of our far-flung battalions and line units. It is recommended that initially, maybe we could have one percent (1%) quota allocation for Candidate Soldier aspirants who have medical course/ related background. This could help augment lacking aid men in our line units. There were negative reports that some of our personnel are having substance abuse, which were not detected because presently Drug test is not included in the medical check-up particularly those under-going Back to Basic. Since Drug testing is costly, coordination with local government units and non-government organizations such as Citizens Drug Watch, Mamamayan Ayaw sa Droga (MAD) and others, on their outreach programs wherein we could tap them to administer drug tests to our personnel.

In order to rejuvenate the minds of our soldiers and shun them away from boredom and keep them busy during admin time, procurement of sports equipment for the line companies like table tennis, basketball; board games such as scrabble, chess, games of the general, etc might help our men from the division down to the line companies to develop confidence and team building and to discourage our men to lock themselves in their own confines and sleep if not ask permission to go on overnight leave/passes/R&R or resort to playing card games ( tong-its) and worst substance abuse (marijuana, shabu, etc).

On value formation, aside from implementing our existing TI & E and other programs, maybe we could inculcate a scheduled attendance to mass/ religious services particularly in our line units. Line commanders could schedule his men on going to church services on a semi monthly basis depending on the threat situation. Otherwise, our CMO operators in the battalion level could arrange for a Priest/ Religious leader to give mass at the CP. It would be better if the Division Chaplain