SURAJ NANDREKAR
PANAJI: With the elections fast approaching, the Chief Minister Dr. Pramod Sawant has once again played the recruitment card, which he has been doing for last one and half year.
The Chief Minister on Goa Revolution Day announced the government would soon advertise around 10,000 jobs. Interestingly, the Chief Minister has been playing the same card to woo the voters since January 2020 when the Zilla Parishad polls were just announced.
He again made the same announcement earlier in 2021, when the Municipal Polls were held this year.
Inquiries by Goemkarponn revealed that the government indeed have 10,226 vacant or sanctioned posts in various departments. It was also revealed that most of the departments have made financial provision for the sanctioned posts.
But sources reveal that the departments have not been given authority to advertise for the posts yet.
On June 16, the State government has finally lifted ban on recruitment processes in government Department/Grant-in-aid institutions/Autonomous Bodies/Corporations/PSU’s.
Ahead of the February 2017 Assembly elections, the then Laxmikant Parsekar government had imposed ban on all recruitment in the government sector for smoother implementation of the Seventh Pay Commission recommendation to the employees, as the additional financial liability to the State was to the tune of Rs 47 crore a month. The ban was to be reviewed in six months.
The Government has decided that the ban imposed vide O.M. No. 9/4/2005 PER dated 22/11/2016 and related instructions shall stand withdrawn with immediate.
CM has the maximum posts
Out of the 10226 posts, Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant, who holds several departments has 4909 posts which is 49 p.c of the total sanctioned posts.
This statistics were taken from the assembly question, in which Sawant had replied to Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat saying 10,226 vacancies are available in Government sector.
Goa Police (2619), Fire & Emergency Services (479), Higher Education (358), Accounts (329), GAD (158), Forest (264), Technical Education (189).
PWD Minister Deepak Pausakar is another minister whose departments have second most posts. His departments in total have 1449 posts which include Printing & Stationary (51), Handicrafts (62), GHRSSIDC (21), PWD (1362).
Power Minister Nilesh Cabral is third in line with 1338 posts – Prosecution (41), Dist. Court South (54), Electricity Department (1100), GSPCB (31), North Goa District Court (08), HC of Bombay (31), Registration Dept. (73).
When you talk of recruitments, how can one leave behind Health Minister Vishwajit Rane who has 1152 sanctioned posts in his department.
His sanctioned posts include – Women & Child (84), Industries (35), Skill Development (95), IPHB (360), FDA (74), Dental College (75), GIDC (21) and Health Services (408).
Where will money come from?
The State’s debts have crossed ₹ 20k cr mark as such every given month the state has borrowed around ₹ 300 cr for salaries.
A top bureaucrat, speaking to Goemkarponn, said that the Government needs to evaluate whether the vacancies originally envisaged and approved were far in excess of the manpower needed to achieve target based verifiable tasks.
“Job creation and sanction have largely been an exercise in political wheel balancing rather than an assessment based project on the manpower needs of departments. Therefore, 10,000 plus vacancies alone cannot be ground to push for recruitment to fill those vacancies. It is high time that a realistic, scientific, assessment is done on the requirements in each department and then restructure the real need based vacancies,” he said.
He said that while Goa’s GDP has seen marked improvement and is likely to hit the Rs 70,000 crore mark, there is a loan liability and the payments need to be done on borrowings.
“The salary component of close to Rs 4000 crore is not a mean figure. This burden is being borne primarily because the sales tax collections are high but that is no real comfort because earnings as taxes should go towards settling existing loan liabilities. Therefore the only way to reduce the salary and pension burden is to reduce the government manpower. In most cases the mounting pension bill gets buried as a part of the overall salary spends. And this is where the nerve center of the burden is. The moment someone is in the government payroll, the latter spends on him or her for life,” he said.
