SURAJ NANDREKAR
suraj@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: If the accountants’ exams results earlier this week sent shock waves throughout the State, wait, there is more to the story. This is not the first time the candidates have failed to clear the accountants’ exam. It was a similar story in 2015.
In 2012, the Accounts Department advertised 25 posts of accountants. In the December 2013 recruitment, exams were conducted through Goa Education Development Corporation (GEDC). Almost 3,500 candidates answered the test but surprisingly almost two years after the exams the department sent a notification that no candidate had cleared it.
A day before Ganesh Chaturthi in 2015, Accounts Department announced that results of the exam held on December 1, 2013 could be checked on the notice board of various treasury offices and were also uploaded on the Departmental website.
On checking the website, it stated that “no candidate who has appeared for the initial recruitment examination for the post of accountant has secured minimum marks in Papers I and II and hence no eligible candidates are eligible to appear for viva-voce/oral interview.”
“It is difficult to imagine, but nevertheless true. Two government departments – Accounts Department and Commercial Taxes Department – had advertised vacancies in 2012-13 but two years later have been unable to find suitable candidates for the posts,” said a senior official, who refused to be named, adding this is a State where there are about 1.5 lakh youth registered with the Employment Exchange.
The Commercial Taxes Department had advertised 25 posts of tax inspectors, and only one candidate from around 4,200 cleared the recruitment test.
Candidates speaking to Herald had said, “In the Accounts Department everything was finalised and only the names of candidates were to be announced but suddenly a new chief minister came in and he wanted his own people in the list.”
Students had alleged that in the previous list many of the candidates were of the then former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar choice, and this did not go down well with the then Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar.
The Accounts Department today is facing a severe staff crunch. “There are 280 accountant posts across the State out of which 110-115 are vacant. Since no candidate cleared the exams we will move another proposal to the State government to conduct another examination,” Accounts Director Prakash Pereira said.
What is interesting is the number of accountants holding additional charge. “If we see almost 70 accountants are holding additional charges,” the director said.
