Decision on regularisation of contractual workers delayed

The Uttarakhand government has kept in abeyance the issue of regularisation of its 24000 contractual workers despite the recommendation of a cabinet sub-committee to regularise them.

The committee headed by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prakash Pant in its report gave approval for the regularisation of workers belonging to class IV and III even as the government faced a heavy financial crunch.

The move to put the decision on backburner came after the finance department opposed the move saying all the posts of class IV were scrapped after the implementation of the sixth pay commission.

“These workers can only be absorbed when there are vacancies. If there is a vacancy, then there should be no problem in regularisation,” said a top government official after the yesterday’s cabinet meeting where the issue came up for discussion. Chief Minister B C Khanduri had already stated that his government has launched efforts to bring down the ballooning non-plan expenditure. He has so far remained non-committal regarding the announcement for creating 50,000 new jobs by the previous Nishank government.

The government is spending Rs 10,334.57 crore in the current fiscal on the non-plan which is considered to be very high against the total government’s expenditure of Rs 19,366.91 crore. Under the social sector, Rs 7,056.77 crore expenditure is estimated this year which is 26 per cent more than the previous year.

Experts said the government is virtually facing an uphill task to fulfil the previous announcements as well as various other development works due to financial constraints. The BJP government is facing difficulties in providing new jobs for which the chief minister has already expressed concern in the wake of the rising unemployment in the hill state.

According to Planning Minister Prakash Pant, there are nearly 5.8 lakh unemployed youths in the state.

These youths hold the key to the next assembly elections in the hill state with a total population of nearly ten million.

Former Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had chalked out a plan to create nearly 50000 [fifty thousand] jobs but did not fulfil the promise during his tenure. After the change of guard, the focus has now shifted on Khanduri with the ruling BJP looking at him with high hopes.