Sir,
Jammu and Kashmir Government’s decision to get rid of deadwood in the State administration by cancelling the re-employment of officers is a step in the right direction. Such contractual appointments that are seen to be unproductive and cause an unnecessary drain on the State exchequer indeed need to be done away with. However, this step may prove ineffective if there is no bid to rationalize and re-organise the huge administrative set up riddled with mismanagement. The PDP-BJP alliance Govt may have inherited a highly chaotic State administrative setup along with the ill planned manner of filling in posts, but how this Govt. negotiates with this inherited chaos remains to be seen. The administrative set up for years has been bogged down by its excessively huge size and poor system of rationalising appointments in accordance with the need, particularly, in school education department. During the Farooq Abdullah regime in the nineties the State Govt. had signed a MOU with the Centre to which the State Govt was tasked to reduce the size of employees by 25 percent. As a result of it a reckless way of appointments, trend of contractual appointments to fill in the gaps became the norm. Much of the mess was created by the two previous NC Govt first by starting the policy of contractual posts like ReT teachers and later thoughtlessly announcing to regularise them. This is neither good for education sector nor for the unemployed youth.
Education Minister Naeem Akhtar has made a good beginning to this end by empowering the Commissioner Secretary Education with powers to effect routine, matters as transfer and check corruption. That may be only one small step. Much more needs to be done.
Yours etc…
Rakesh Singh Chambial,
Billan Bowli, Udhampur,
General Line
Teachers Forum
Follow our WhatsApp channel