Central Services employees, represented by Central Secretariat Service Forum (CSS Forum), today met Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology; MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh and expressed their heartfelt gratitude to the Minister of the Department of Personnel and Training (DOPT) for starting the trend of mass promotions and thus completely clearing off the large backlog of stranded promotions which had been accumulated over several decades.
The delegation members said, this initiative has sent a wave of happiness across sections of employees and that they had never heard of any such sensitive move by the government for its employees ever happening since the independence of India.
The employees’ representatives said, recent initiatives have morally boosted their cadre and enhanced their motivation. These developments are expected to significantly impact the productivity of the Central Secretariat, they said.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, “PM Narendra Modi has made all efforts to ensure that government jobs are available to the maximum extent possible. It was at his behest that the Rozgar Mela series was started to provide 10 lakh government jobs”.
PM Modi is also always keen to ensure work friendly and motivating environment for employees, said Dr Jitendra Singh.
Under such circumstances, Dr Jitendra Singh said, he himself personally felt disturbed to come across cases where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without securing a single promotion. He said, he has discussed the issue with all the senior officers in the Ministry and several innovative means have been evolved to avoid, in future, stagnation at middle and lower rungs of the administration.
“It is extremely painful and disheartening to see employees sometimes superannuating in the same grade as promotions remained stuck,” said the Minister.
Dr Jitendra Singh said that in the last nine years, under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Government has periodically reviewed the longstanding stagnation issues in the various Central Ministries that are a legacy of the past due to pending court cases, lack of vacancies in higher grades and other personnel issues.
The Minister informed that last year also about 9,000 mass promotions were made and prior to that the DoPT granted 4,000 promotions in the preceding three years.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, in order to bring in the ease of governance as well as objectivity in empanelment, the government has, in the last nine years, improvised upon the procedures so as to ensure that there are no subjective preferences involved in carrying out the promotions.
“Procedures have been made more hi-tech using sophisticated technology tools to minimize the human interface,” he added.
The orders for mass promotion of these employees belonging to the Central Secretariat Service (CSS) have been issued after several rounds of high-level meetings in DoPT chaired by Dr Jitendra Singh in the last few months. The Minister said, even legal experts were consulted as some of the orders are subject to the outcome of pending writ petitions.
The DoPT Minister said that the Modi government has done away with over 1,600 rules which were either obsolete or had become irrelevant with the passage of time.
Dr Jitendra Singh said, “All this is meant not only to ensure effective and timely delivery of outcomes for the public, but also to enable the employees to perform to the best of their ability”.
Recognition of CSS Day and Cadre Restructuring were some of the other demands put across by the delegation.
The Minister expressed his appreciation for the dedication and hard work of CSS Officers and assured them of the government’s commitment to address their concerns and improve their working conditions.
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SNC/PK
