Dilbert heaven: wages for idling!

PUNE: This one has ‘Yes, Minister’ beat. The Maharashtra government’s attempts to reduce administrative expenses by identifying and redeploying surplus staff is resulting in staff getting paid for doing nothing! Take the ‘community television services’ cell, which was abolished in August 2001. But since the government doesn’t know where to put the staff, more than 100 ‘surplus’ employees of this cell are continuing to draw full salaries for sitting idle.
The same applies to many other employees who were declared surplus and transferred to the surplus staff cell, from where they were supposed to be redeployed. But since redeployment orders don’t seem to be coming, most of these employees are signing the muster and sitting idle in state government offices in Pune, Mumbai and elsewhere.
In fact, some employees who were transferred from rural areas to Pune following the closure of their department are now demanding a hike in their salaries since the allowances for Pune are higher than in taluka headquarters!
“At one end the government says it is hardpressed for funds.While here we are drawing full salaries while sitting idle,� an employee of the community television cell said, while declining to be identified.
“Sitting idle for the last 10 months is psychologically disturbing for many of us. All we are doing is waiting for fresh appointments,� he said.
Employees pointed out that the current state budget has allocated Rs 2.72 crore for the defunct community television services cell primarily to pay salaries to the staff which has been identified as ‘surplus’.
Narayan Joshi, president of the State Government Employees Federation told Times News Network that of the 170 employees of the cell who were declared surplus in August 2001, 55 were absorbed. “The remaining are sitting idle. The government has also decided that they will be retrenched if they remain surplus for more than a year,� Joshi added.
Joshi said state government employees were extremely unhappy with the manner in which the current government was going about reducing staff.
He said that under the “surplus staff� drive, 30,000 employees had been identified. Last year, state chief secretary V. Ranganathan had said 10,000 government employees had been identified as surplus. The government also wants to exit the dairy sector.