BHUBANESWAR: The Orissa Diploma Engineers’ Service Association has threatened to launch an agitation unless the injustice done to the diploma engineers in the restructuring of engineering cadre is corrected.
In a release here, association general secretary Jasobanta Nayak alleged that restructuring of the engineering cadre has been done only to satisfy the degree engineers. He said that diploma engineers promoted as assistant engineers have been ignored during the cadre restructuring.
As per the recruitment rules, the entry grade for a degree engineer is assistant engineer (class-II) and entry grade of diploma engineer is junior engineer (class-III). The post of junior engineer has been declared as special gazetted.
Nayak said that as per the promotion rules, junior engineer post is feeder grade of assistant engineer post and 33 percent of the posts remain reserved for the promotion of junior engineer to the rank of assistant engineer. Rest of the posts are being filled up through Orissa Public Service Commission (OPSC) by the degree engineers.
But after the restructuring, degree engineers will be directly posted as assistant executive engineers with junior class-I status. Further, promotion of junior engineers to the post has been reduced to 10 per cent from 33 per cent.
Nayak alleged that because of some restrictions it is apprehended that no diploma engineer will be eligible to get promotion to the entry grade of degree engineers.
This has been brought to the notice of Governor Murlidhar Chandrakant Bhandare, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and chief secretary Ajit Kumar Tripathy with a request to do justice to the diploma engineers.