The Administrator of the Defence Department said last night the Bermuda Regiment?s Commanding Officer was ?speaking for himself? when it came to needing 100 full-time soldiers at an annual cost of $4 million to meet its obligations in an independent Bermuda.

?He was speaking for himself. At that time studies and papers were done on the Regiment ? but facts are facts and put forward to whatever year and the facts are the same,? Larry Burchall said. ?We have a very limited pool of manpower in Bermuda that staff a number of things.?

The only two disciplined services which are staffed entirely by Bermudians are the Bermuda Fire Service and the Prison Service, Mr. Burchall said.

The Regiment is trying to find a large number of people who will belong to it body and soul,? he said. ?Only 800 people are born in Bermuda in any year. Half are females which gives you a pool of 400 people.?

He said these 400 males are trying to feed all of the discipline services, including the Bermuda Police Service and Bermuda Regiment.

However, this does not even include the number of men each year who will want a career outside of the discipline services, he said, for instance in international business or construction.

?If you only have 400 babies then 18 or 19 years later you only have 400 people to choose from,? he said.

But when asked why the Regiment did not conscript females to double its number, Mr. Burchall said that was a separate issue and the issue of conscription was one ?the whole nation had to resolve?.

The only nation in the world to conscript females was Israel, he said, which had a far more liberal conscription policy for females than it did for male Israeli soldiers.

In 2006 Mr. Burchall expects the Regiment to have an intake of around 180 soldiers.

Mr. Burchall said 534 Bermudian men have already been called to duty for the first time in lists published in newspapers last week.

However, 30 percent to 40 percent of those called for the first time will be away at school, he said.

?Others will be unfit after a doctor sees them and we will pick up around 150 to 170,? he said. ?The balance will come from another list of people called in the past who have returned to the Island after being away in school for three to four years. But we have been tracking them.?

However, he said a the number of graduates returning to Bermuda every year was decreasing.

?Of the other 500 previously deferred people, around ten to 15 percent of them will cross our paths because once you go abroad for school anywhere from three to seven years, we find people have married and settled down overseas,? he said.

Depending on the length of time the Department of Defence simply stops looking for people if they had been away from Bermuda long enough, he said.

But Mr. Burchall said men are still eligible to start at the Bermuda Regiment up to the age of 30-years-old.

The last boot camp was a busy one with 189 of 204 conscripts turning up at Warwick Camp this January but only four of the soldiers were women.

However, he said draft dodgers occupied a very small percentage in 2005 ? with less than five percent of the draft absent without leave.

?Last year we had 85 percent compliance of those called up for the first time group,? he said. ?Of the 15 percent who did not explain why they were not there. Some of them had moved out of Bermuda, which brings it down to less than five percent of them not accounted for.?

The Administrator said the worst thing for draftees to do was to not do anything at all.

?It embarrassing when we have to go to your place of employment,? he said. ?If you do nothing is what will get you in trouble.?