Telangana govt issues orders to fill 1,857 forest beat officer posts

HYDERABAD: The government on Wednesday issued orders for immediately filling up 1,857 vacant posts of forest beat officers (FBOs) in the state. The forests in Telangana are divided into 3,130 beats, each spread over an average of 20 sq km with a few more than 1,000 of them staffed by beat officers.The FBOs along with TIME assistant beat officers IMPA (ABOs) comprise the boots on the ground for the department when it comes to forest and wildlife protection.
It may be recalled that The Times of India on June 18 in its report 'T chasing tree planting, set to miss big forest picture', highlighted how the ground level vacancies in the forest department is set to impact Telangana's standing in the conservation community and adver sely impact the comprehen sive week-long `Monitoring of Tiger, Co-predator, Prey and Habitat' in the state.
The STOI report had al so highlighted how under the current rules, recruit ment would be near impos sible as the Telangana State Public Service Commission recruits staff using district as a unit while the forest de partment uses its 58 divi sions as identiS fying units. In its orders on Wednesday, CT the govern ment said the TSPSC will expeditiously initiate the recruitment process.
As per data available with the forest department, the total sanctioned strength of FBOs and ABOs is 3,652 of which 2,223 are va cant. In addition, 67 posts of range officers are also va cant in the department along with eight deputy range officers and 264 sec tion officer positions.