Cabinet to discuss VRS for govt employees

new delhi: the union cabinet is likely to discuss on tuesday introduction of voluntary retirement scheme (vrs) in virtually all ministries as recommended by the expenditure reforms commission (erc) and consider a proposal on modalities of freeing petroleum sector from price controls. reform initiatives in other sectors such as fertiliser, agriculture, drug and department of personnel are also expected to figure in the meeting, official sources said.as part of oil sector decontrol, pricing of controlled products- petrol, diesel, kerosene and cooking gas (lpg)- is to be freed from april one, 2002 and on tuesday the council of ministers would deliberate on the modalities of doing that. while import parity price is proposed to be given to the controlled products and domestic crude oil, subsidies on kerosene and lpg are to be brought down to 33.3 and 15 per cent respectively. among the more controversial ministries in which downsizing is likely to be discussed is the information and broadcasting ministry in which the erc had suggested shutting down of several media units including the davp, directorate of film festivals, films division, directorate of field publicity and song and drama division. the suggestions of the erc, if implemented, would result in the total staff strength of the ministry and organisations under it including prasar bharti being reduced from 7779 posts to 2176 posts. the i&b minister sushma swaraj has said that she is for rightsizing instead of downsizing as most media units have their relevance even today. the erc had suggested restructuring of virtually all the ministries barring the railways ministry. in its suggestions the commission had mooted offering vrs to staff moved to the surplus pool from the various ministries from posts which have been declared redundant. the erc had also suggested an improvement in the vrs to 35 days for every year of service and 25 days for every year of service remaining over an earlier suggestion of restricting vrs to only 45 days for every year of service put. suggestions of the erc to downsize the government have already begun to be implemented since 1999 with government restricting its recruitment to one per cent as against three per cent of the staff retiring annually to attain a target of reducing central employees by 10 lakh in a five year period. among the reform initiatives expected to be discussed is the proposed long-term fertiliser policy which seeks to completely decontrol the fertiliser sector, wherein urea is the only controlled nutrient at present, in a phased manner. in the 2001-02 union budget, the government had stated that it would implement the recommendations of the erc to replace the unit-wise retention price system (rps) for urea by group-wise mechanism. the much-awaited drug policy seeking to reduce the span of price control is also expected to be discussed in the meeting. related stories: