Govt's job to ensure safety of honest employees: PM

The job of the government must be to ensure safety of honest employees and they should be encouraged, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said today.
His assertion assumes significance as there have been demands for protection by certain serving and retired government employees allegedly named in certain big-ticket scams like coal blocks and spectrum allocations.
"It is true that people do not fear laws. In government too, if he (employee) gets suspended, he knows he will get 50 per cent salary. Then there will be departmental enquiry which will be managed and then once the enquiry is over he will be reinstated and eventually get all the dues.

"This sort of system is creating problem for the one who wants to work with honesty. Then the job of government is to ensure safety of honest people and to give honest people their due. And we need to emphasise on this," Modi said.
The Prime Minister said that the common men and maximum number of government employees of the country are not dishonest.
"Common men is not dishonest. Common government employee is not dishonest. There is a big group of people who are living with honesty but there are some people because of which this perception (that all employees are corrupt) exist," Modi said.

The Prime Minister was addressing valedictory function of vigilance awareness week organised by Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) here.
Various associations of central government employees have been reportedly seeking protection for their members.
"An honest civil servant should not be harassed by anybody or agency or institution while in service or after retirement. It would make the civil servants working in the system nervous and edgy, which would not be in the interest of the country," the IAS officers association had said some time back.