Vacancies in Secretariat a cause for concern

Several vacancies in varied departments housed on the Secretariat campus in Chennai have turn out to be a cause for concern.

It is claimed that the vacancies have been inflicting delays at the same time as the federal government is racing towards time to clear all of the recordsdata forward of the Assembly election. Most of the vacancies are of Under Secretary and Deputy Secretary posts in varied departments.

Though the sanctioned energy of Under Secretaries is round 240 in 36 State authorities departments (in what is called ‘one unit’, excluding the Finance and the Law Departments), greater than 150 posts are vacant.

“The Under Secretaries are also posted as Public Information Officers [PIOs] for giving replies to RTI Act queries. Since about 70%-75% of posts are vacant, the response to RTI applications are also delayed,” stated a part officer.

Section officers should not promoted as Under Secretaries. The promotion of typists, assistants and assistant part officers have additionally been affected because the Under Secretary posts haven’t been crammed.

Another officer stated sure litigation regarding the problem have been pending in court docket, regardless of over 60 hearings.

“Only because the government extended the services of government employees by one more year with effect from last year, some Under-Secretaries are still in service. If not for the announcement, there would have been more vacancies,” he added. When contacted, a senior official instructed The Hindu that the federal government was not capable of fill these vacancies as a result of pending litigation.

However, directions have been issued to the Personnel and Administrative Reforms Department to advertise these (litigating) part officers to the Under Secretary posts, topic to the result of the case.

“However, we could not do the same for Deputy Secretary posts, since only a few positions are vacant and there are multiple claimants for each of these posts,” the official added.