Bid to trim babudom flab hits stonewall

KOLKATA: Buddhadeb government''s efforts to cut down the excess flab in the administrative structure has hit a political stone-wall.
Recently, the government dumped a proposal from the home (personnel) department, asking for the nod to redeploy about 4,500 staff — surplus in 29 departments — in government undertakings and sponsored institutes / organisations.
The proposal claimed that the excess staff should be allowed to be redeployed in institutes like schools, colleges, PSUs and other organisations across the state as the government did not have so many opportunities of redeployment within its structure.
The process would be according to qualification of the staff.
If an employee is qualified enough, he/she can even be allowed to teach in schools or clerical jobs in colleges.
But this might require transferring the staff concerned in the districts.
The logic put forward was since the state government bear the burden of salaries in these institutes, redeployment process should cover them.
The proposal also urged the state government to create a comprehensive database of requirement in various aided/sponsored institutes as well along with government departments.
This, officials urged, would help to ease out the existing burden of the state government after freezing new appointments.
Already 14 departments are behind schedule by six months to submit their list of redeployble employees and rationalise their staff strength with the deadline lapsing in December 2003. Defaulters include the biggest departments — health and finance.
After the process is finally over, the number of redeployble employees might shoot up to over 8,000, officials claimed.
The argument in the proposal put forward by the home (personnel) was not to confine redeployment of the excess staff within the government departments but to extend it further to other state aided offices to ease out the process, as accommodating over 8,000 staff would be difficult within the government.
Permissions were sought to identify requirement in state aided organisations and later on redeploy the staff there which may not necessarily be within the city.
Currently, a staggering 333 people on average are there just to carry files, fetch drinking water and occasional tea and coffee per department at the age of e-governance.
As most of these group D staff are not only backed by the Left backed Coordination Committee but also active party workers in most cases, the proposal was not accepted by them, who refused to even leave the city in case of redeployment within the state.
But that proposal was not considered and the government yet again bowed down to the pressures from coordination committee, enough to make officials frustrated.