MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2024
Team Herald
Panjim: Ahead of a meeting of Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC), the Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC) is facing a tough time in filling up cadre postings in the government departments owing to lack of eligible candidates. Two major departments - Electricity and Water Resources have temporary Chief Engineers (CE) with the term of one of them slated to end this month.
“Today the positions of CE in the WRD and Electricity department are not filled on regular basis due to non-availability of qualified and experienced candidates within the department. This is mainly the result of years of taking cadre management lightly and granting ad hoc promotions instead of timely regular promotions,” a source at the Secretariat, closely monitoring the promotion and transfers of officers, told Herald.
Sources said that the Electricity Department does not have regular full time CE for years. The last Chief Electrical Engineer Reshma Mathew was a regular Superintending Engineer and held the charge till GPSC appointed Raghuvir Keni on deputation from MPT, last year. Keni’s term ends this month and due to probable unavailability of qualified officers, the department might have to once again experience a vacuum.
Similar is the situation in the WRD, wherein no officer has been found to be eligible to take over the position of CE after Sandeep Nadkarn’s retirement from the post. The government had moved a file to the GPSC for relaxation in experience required.
It is learnt that denying the promotion of officials at such a time, has created dissatisfaction in the cadre and this is leading to senior positions being unfilled for several years.
“When there are insufficient officers at the higher level, each officer holds multiple charges, which generally are at different locations bringing down the efficiency of the department and also resulting in public being unable to resolve their issues in a timely manner. Many other departments have similar issues. Besides the positions of heads of departments, other senior positions are also vacant for want of experienced and qualified official,” the source said.
Herald contacted the GPSC Chairman Jose Manuel Noronha for a comment to which he replied, “The public service commission had been viewing the entire process of ad hocism seriously and for the last three years the commission has cleared more than 2,500 cases concerning lifting of probation, confirmation in services and promotion of officers to the next grade. This has to a large extent eased the situation.”
He further said that GPSC has also been granting relaxing in the required experience limited to a maximum of one year in special cases so that the work of the government is not hampered on account of not having senior officials in position.
On Tuesday, the GPSC will be considering promotions to the positions of Superintending Engineers and Executive Engineers at the DPC meeting; as it will also take up promotions in various other departments.
