Agartala: Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Friday assured the state assembly that his government would leave off the move to fill up regular sanctioned posts of various government departments through outsourcing agencies following pressure from his party MLAs along with the opposition.
The directorate of manpower and employment on Feb 26 last had issued a notification asking the departments to hire a staff of 86 categories including officers, doctors, stenographers, food inspectors and ICDS supervisors from five listed agencies, which triggered a serious reaction in the state.
The BJP MLA Ashis Kumar Saha on the first day of the ensuing budget session moved a private member resolution seeking to stop such move and withdraw the notification terming it as anti-people and a desperate attempt to provide an opportunity for private agencies who would do business on hire and fire basis with the talent of Tripura.
“Nowhere in the country, such practice is being made so far that the officers who are supposed to be appointed through state public service commission have been given to the hand of private parties.
There will be no job security and satisfaction working under agencies and how can we allow the highly qualified persons to serve under business groups. It would be cheating with our qualified youths,” Saha said, moving the resolution.
Discussing the issue another BJP MLA and former health minister of Biplab’s cabinet Sudip Roybarman alleged that the BJP-IPFT government soon after came to power in 2018 had framed a transparent employment policy and it was decided all the sanctioned regular post will be filled up in a phased manner.
But suddenly, hiring staff even the top officers through outsourcing is disappointing and considered as a calculative step to ‘unpopular the government and defame PM Modi.’
“Prime Minister has a clear cut vision for the development of the northeast creating job opportunities, good governance and pro-people administration but whoever is behind such a design is frustrating and anti-people. The government cannot run with the ideas of officers and babus. I know there was no such decision taken in the cabinet,” Roybarman underlined.
Taking part in the discussion leader of the opposition Manik Sarkar, CPI-M legislator Nirmal Biswas, BJP MLAs Ratan Chakraborty and Ranjit Das opposed such move and urged the chief minister to step back from the decision and withdraw the immediate notification to erase the misunderstanding.
The Chief Minister finally assured the house that as soon as the matter came to his notice, he called Chief Secretary and sought clarification because the state government had no such intention. He said that the previous Left Front government had decided to appoint sweepers, cleaners and security guards mostly in hospitals and a few other departments and staff in externally aided projects and central government schemes and the present government is also doing the same.
“We have either given or about to give government jobs in regular posts to over 28,000 youths in last three years and if we take all kinds of employment opportunities including self-employment the figure comes 1.4 lakh. So, there is no confusion about the intention of the government but the notification was a mistake and we stand to be corrected,” Deb asserted in the house.
