The Association had been acting tough over the past few weeks demanding that the government implement the VII Pay Commission recommendations at the earliest and had threatened a massive march on December 7, if the notification on the Pay Commission Implementation was not out by that date. The GGEA had threatened to bring 50,000 government servants to the streets, a figure that would paralyse traffic in Panjim and Porvorim as the plan entailed a march from Panjim KTC bus stand to the Secretariat in Porvorim across the River Mandovi.
The government on its part, was moving towards the implementation of the commission recommendations and the cabinet had earlier even approved the disbanding of Class ‘D’ employees and absorbing them into Class ‘C’ so as to facilitate the implementation of the new pay commission recommendations. The government employees were well aware of this, yet kept the pressure on the government to implement the recommendations, despite also knowing that a budgetary provision for the enhanced salaries had been made by the Chief Minister as early as in March this year. The additional monthly burden on the government once the revised pay scales are implemented will be approximately Rs 72 core. With the cabinet set to approve the pay commission recommendations this week, the threatened strike will have to be called off, but the decision not to proceed with recruitments will dampen the enthusiasm of government servants at least a little bit.
Imposing the moratorium on recruitments, the government order stated that adequate balance needs to be maintained considering the additional enhanced liabilities on account of the increase in salary and pension viz-a-viz the existing strength of the government and government-aided employees. The circular is clear that to ensure that there are adequate funds for payment of the enhanced salaries and pensions and so as to make the implementation of the recommendations of the VII Pay Commission as smooth as possible, the halt to all recruitment processes was required. The Chief Minister went further the next day saying that it will be task of the next government to decide on the recruitments that were currently in process and that will be held up following this decision.
In this regard, it is important to note that Goa has a huge government workforce that runs up to approximately 62,000 persons employed in government departments, corporations, aided institutions. This figure, when placed alongside the number of voters the State has, gives an astounding ratio of 1 government employee for every 22 persons. Compare this to various other states where the ratio is far better, with Gujarat having 1 for every 249 people. This indicates that Goa’s government departments, corporations and aided institutions are not only overstaffed, they are actually bloated and need much trimming.
Against this background, the moratorium on recruitments does not appear to be a harsh decision. The current government had already tasked the new government that will be sworn in after the 2017 elections on deciding on the pending recruitments. It would be in the fitness of things if the new government, when it is in place, continues the moratorium and undertakes a study on the government workforce detailing whether the departments are indeed understaffed or whether there is surplus staff. The current monthly salary bill to government staff is Rs 213 crore, which will go up by Rs 59 crore to Rs 272 crore, this is not accounting for pensions, whose addition burden on the government will be Rs 13 crore. According to the budget, the government had made a provision of Rs 2553 crore as agains the previous year’s provision of Rs 1946 crore. Any government that comes to power has to relook at the government staffing before beginning recruitments.
