CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government has some major work to do as far as filling vacancies in the government jobs are concerned. Till now the government has been able to give only 57,905 government jobs in last three year. And now the decision to reduce retirement age from 60 to 58 years has only increased its woes as around 20,000 employees will retire in the coming six months of these 5,600 will retire on March 31.
The employees who already on extension will be retired in two phases. Those above 59 years will retire on March 31 and those who will turn 58 year will retire on September 30 thus around 20,000 employees will retire. In the first phase on March 31, 5,600 employees will retire of these 1,800 in education department, 10 Punjab Civil Service (PCS) officers, 77 Punjab Police Service (PPS) all these officers are working on extension. “Government has hardly have any time to get their retirement files cleared in such short period, as for the police officers their clearance has to be taken from intelligence wing also. It takes six months to get the files of employees prepared who have to retire but due to paucity of time now a special cell is being created who will deal with retirement cases,’’ said an official.
“Thus as a one time expenditure the state government will have to incur `3,500 crore in retiring these employees,’’ said Principal Secretary Finance, Punjab Anirudh Tewari. Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal said, “With this move, we will be able to provide employment to four times the number of people who retire and will get more talented pool of young people from all streams of education law, IT and so forth.’’At present 3.50 lakh government employees are working in the state departments and the attrition rate is 5 to 9 per cent. It is learnt that more than 1.50 lakh vacancies are lying vacant in different government departments, the officials who are presently working have additional charges.
It was in 2012 during the SAD-BJP government that it was decided to give extension in service from 58 to 59 year and then again for another year till 60 years and all the employees were eligible under it. But in 2017 when Congress government came to power, it decided to scrap this extension but it could not implement it for three years due to cash crunch. The state government started a scheme ‘ghar ghar rozgaar’ (jobs for all) but has now been facing flak for failing to provide jobs.
Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh had come out with data to prove his claim on employment generation. As per the official data available with the government the number of jobs generated from April 1, 2017 to December 31, 2019 was 57,905 and 3,96,775 under private placement another 7,61,289 facilitated by his government in the self-employment category. He said that it was in addition to the 20,21,568 households given employment under the MGNREGA scheme, which translated into a whopping 648.26 lakh mandays. His government, said Amarinder was committed to ensuring jobs for all the eligible youth in the state, and to taking its flagship ‘Ghar Ghar Rozgar’ scheme to its successful culmination.