Committee for holistic policy on contractual appointment

To standardise the mode of contractual appointment in various departments and offices of the government and to develop a holistic human resource policy for persons engaged on contractual basis, the Orissa government has constituted a secretary level committee.

The committee is headed by the secretary, state finance department and includes eight other members.

They are secretaries in the departments of scheduled caste/scheduled tribe development, school and mass education department, home, law, water resources, revenue and disaster management, and panchayatiraj and special secretary in the general administration department.

The committee would examine the methods of appointment of contractual employees in various departments under the state government and formulate the norms and conditions of their service, finance minister Prafulla Chandra Ghadai said.

Ghadai said, due to severe financial crisis, the state government had banned filling up of any base level vacant posts in the late 90’s.

However, subsequent to signing the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Union government and as per the recommendation of the Eleventh Finance Commission (EFC), base level vacant posts were filled up on contractual and consolidated remuneration basis. Besides, contractual engagements were also made through service provider.

While 1.43 lakh persons have been appointed since 1999 based on the necessity with the approval of the finance department mainly in departments like school and mass education, health and home, 1 lakh persons still continue as contractual workers.

However, while making appointments against the contractual posts created as per the norms of the finance department, the prescribed procedure wasn’t followed by the appointing authority.

In this backdrop, there was an urgent need to standardise the mode of contractual engagements and develop a holistic HR policy for persons engaged on contractual basis in different government departments and offices.