Not only has Chief Minister Dr Pramod Sawant said that he wants the village panchayats to complete their Swampurna Goa projects by December this year, but he has announced that the 10,000 jobs the government had said it would advertise, will also be filled up in the current calendar year. Obviously, the aim is to complete the recruitment process before the election that is due in February or March next year. Jobs in the public sector as an election sop is what successive governments across the country have relied upon during election time, so the State’s move is hardly surprising.
In 2016, in the run-up to the 2017 State Assembly elections, the then government of Laxmikant Parsekar had become the first State in the country to implement the VII Pay Commission recommendations for its staff, giving them a substantial raise in their take home salaries and also paying the arears that would be due to them. This had increased the salary bill by several crore rupees as it also included the pensions that would be paid to retired staff. This a cash-strapped government had been ill able to afford, yet it had gone ahead with it. Ironically, at that time the same government had imposed a moratarium on recruitment in government departments and government aided institutions. What it was unable to offer via recruitment, it sought to offer via increased salaries.
The Chief Minister’s explanation for the recruitment drive is that many of the employees are retiring this year and they have to be replaced. It is an acceptable justification to bring in new employees, but one has to consider that Goa with a population of 1.5 million persons has a huge government workforce that runs up to approximately 62,000 persons employed across government departments, corporations and aided institutions. The State practically has 1 government employee for every 22 persons, while the ratio in other States is much lower. Gujarat for instance has 1 government employee for approximately every 249 people. So, does Goa in reality need to recruit more employees, or can it redeploy the exisiting government servants to meet the staffing needs of the departments?
When the available data glaringly points out that the government departments are overstaffed, is the recruitment of anothet 10,000 persons justified? The recruitment will hugely increase the burden on the State’s finances. The State has been borrowing heavily in the past months and the pandemic restrictions have further brought down revenue. What was required at this point of time were some austerity measures to tide over the financial situation in the State. Instead, we have another large intake of staff on the anvil.
The government has to take a pragmatic decision on whether it truly needs the additional staff and whether it can afford to pay the new recruits without further burdening the exchequer and tax payer. Goa has a bloated bureaucracy. The pay scales, following the implementation of the VII Pay Commission recommendations, are high. The additional burden could have been reduced if the government were to freeze recruitment and undertake an exercise to redeploy surplus staff in departments to those that are understaffed. In a situation where there is a financial crunch, the government should select the path that has the least economic burden on the exchequer.
The State’s current financial situation does not warrant such a huge intake of new staff. In departments where recruitment is essential the process has to be completed but surely where it can be postponed the government can and should slow down the recruitment process. In the past pandemic period the economy has to be given the time to regrow before imposing an additional burden on it.
