Central Govt. To Abolish Posts Lying Vacant For 5 Years

The Modi government which swept to power on the promise of creating 10 million jobs annually is planning to abolish all government posts that are vacant for more than five years. The government asked all ministries and departments to submit a comprehensive report on this matter. But the bizarre thing is this: most of these posts are vacant because successive govts. have placed a moratorium on new recruitment. The posts were vacant because govt. was not recruiting and now the govt. says it is abolishing them because they are vacant!

In a new office memorandum dated January 16, 2018, Finance Ministry said that some ministries and departments have responded to the earlier memorandum circulated on April 12, 2017 but many have submitted the requisite information in a piecemeal manner instead of comprehensive report.

Earlier, on April 12, 2017, the Department of Expenditure which comes under Finance Ministry, had asked all ministries and departments to submit the report on actions which are taken place to abolish vacant posts for more than five years. The particular sets of instructions are applicable for posts in all Ministries/ Departments, their Attached offices, Subordinate offices, statutory bodies etc.

“All Ministries/ Departments may submit to this Department, within three months, an Action Taken Report regarding the abolition of posts which are vacant for more than 5 years in the Ministry/ Department and organisations under their administrative control. Further, while referring any proposal for creation/ revival of posts to this Department, Ministries/ Departments may enclose a Certificate that all posts under their administrative control, vacant for more than 5 years on the date of referring proposal, has been abolished,” the memorandum stated.

Through the new memorandum, finance ministry repeated its proposal to abolish the posts which are vacant for more than five years. As part of the implementation, financial advisors and joint secretaries of all ministries and departments were directed to identify such posts and submit a report on abolition these posts at the earliest.

Thereafter, the Ministry of Home affairs directed all its additional secretaries, joint secretaries, chiefs of para-military forces and other attached organisations to submit comprehensive reports, a home ministry official was quoted as saying.

As per the annual report on Pay and Allowances of Central Government Civilian Employees 2016-17, the total number of Regular Central Government Civilian Employees in position was 32.21 lakh against the sanctioned strength of 36.34 lakh as on March 1, 2016.

Quoting the same report, Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh informed the Parliament on December 20, 2017, that the number of vacant posts in position in various ministries/departments is 4,12,752 out of the total sanctioned strength of 36,33,935.

According to the International Labour Organization, only about 823,000 jobs had been created in the country by the Modi government, which promised 10 million jobs annually, till October last year most of it classified as vulnerable employment. The new move from the Modi government came amidst the job crisis in the country.

In a recent study “Waiting for Jobs” by Radhicka Kapoor of Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) pointed out the languorous rate of job creation in the country for the past few years. The study highlighted few statistics which portray the severity of deepening job crisis in the country.

First, data from the Labour Bureau’s Annual Household Employment survey pictures a decline in total employment from 480.4 million in the 2013-14 financial year to 467.6 million in the 2015-16 financial year. Over the same period of time, job opportunities in the manufacturing sector, both in organised and unorganized, too declined from 51.4 million to 48.1 million.

In the second set of analysis, the study examined data from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), an enterprise survey which covers only the organised manufacturing sector. Though, they found an increase in employment opportunities from 12.94 million to 13.25 million between 2013-14 and 2014-15, 3.15 lakh or 85.02 percent of jobs were contractual jobs.

Again, the study furnished the statistics from various administrative data sets including government’s recently launched National Career Services (NCS), which provides a nation-wide online platform for job seekers and employers. 36.25 million Job seekers were registered on the NCS portal as of March 2016 and this got increased to 39.92 million against a mere 7.73 lakh vacancies by October 2017.

The datasets testify the acuteness of India’s jobs crisis. Yet the govt. continues with its plan of chipping away at jobs.