With 1.9 lakh job vacancies, Telangana govt is working at 61% of total strength

As many as 1.91 lakh posts have been lying vacant in various government departments in Telangana for the last six years and the state government has been running the administration with outsourced and contract employees by paying them nominal wages, according to a report of the pay revision committee.

Headed by retired IAS officer C R Biswal, the three-member pay revision committee which started its work in July 2018, submitted the report to the state government earlier this month. On Wednesday, the report was made available to the public.

According to the report, there are 31 departments in the Telangana government with a sanctioned strength of 4,91,304 employees. However, at present, there are only 3,00,178 employees, which means there are a little over 1.91 lakh posts lying vacant in various departments, which is 39 per cent of the total strength.

Three lakh-odd employees, 76.88 per cent belong to only five departments – school education, police, health and family welfare, revenue and panchayat raj. The school education department has the highest number of employees, majority of them being teachers. Out of the total sanctioned strength of 1,37,651, there are only 1,13,853 employees in this department.

In the police department, which has the second highest number of employee strength, there are 61,212 employees as against the sanctioned strength of 98,394. This is followed by the medical and health department with an employee strength of 22,336 as against the sanctioned strength of 52,906.

The sanctioned strength of the Revenue Department is 27,786 against which 19,825 are working. In Panchayat Raj & Rural Development Department the sanctioned strength is 26,201 against which 13,573 are working.

The Biswal committee also pointed out that Telangana was lagging behind in terms of population-workforce ratio, compared to many other states. While the population of Telangana is 3.52 crore, the sanctioned employee strength is 4.91 lakh, which accounts for the population-workforce ratio of 1.40.

“Nagaland has the highest population-employee ratio of 4.09, followed by Jammu and Kashmir (3.59), Himachal Pradesh (3.16), Goa (2.87), Maharashtra and Meghalaya (1.69) and Tamil Nadu (1.66),” the report said.

An official in the general administration department said on condition of anonymity that there has hardly been any recruitment of employees in the last five years, except a few thousands in school education and police departments. “The government has been running the administration by hiring employees on outsourcing and contract basis, instead of regular recruitment,” he said.

According to the Biswal committee’s report, there are around one lakh contract and outsourced employees in various departments working in various capacities starting from drivers, peons, junior office assistants to senior assistants with a monthly salary ranging from ₹12,000 to ₹17,500. The commission recommended enhancement of their salaries to a minimum of ₹19,000 to a maximum of ₹31,000.

Besides, nearly 6,000 lecturers in various government junior and degree colleges in the state are working on contract basis with little higher wages, and the commission recommended an increase in their wages substantially.

In December, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had announced that there would be a massive recruitment drive very soon to fill up as many as 50,000 vacant posts. An official statement from the chief minister’s office (CMO) said KCR had asked all the departments to furnish the details of the vacancies available which need to be filled up immediately.

“The recruitment drive will be launched soon after the completion of the ongoing exercise of giving promotions to the employees, which has been pending for a long time,” the CMO had said.