TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: While stating that there are over 1,600 vacant civil service posts reserved for schedule tribes, Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Friday admitted that they were not filled since there are no qualified candidates from the community, especially to fill posts in health and education departments.
Speaking during Question Hour, Parrikar lamented that despite advertising hundreds of posts in various departments, government could not get the eligible candidates for the same from ST community. Citing an example, he said that in the health department total 127 posts were advertised, however the department received only 27 applications.
According to the reply tabled on the floor of the House, 1,614 ST posts are vacant in various government departments. Government has filled total 688 posts in the last two years.
The question was raised by Congress MLA Aleixo Reginaldo Lourenco who sought to know the number of ST vacancies pending in government departments and the efforts initiated by government to fill the same.
Tribal Minister Ramesh Tawadkar replied that government has decided to launch a mass recruitment drive to fill the backlog after it was observed that people are not coming forward to apply for the posts. “Government has been very active and efforts are on to fill the backlog vacancies. Unfortunately, the response is very poor,” he said. Tawadkar informed House that so far 364 vacancies have been filled in police department, 52 in Goa Medical College, 41 in Fire and Emergency Services, 27 in education department and another 23 in health department.
