THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: CPM has convened a meeting of private secretaries of all state ministers at the AKG Centre here on Saturday to brief them on the guidelines for ministers and personal staff. The guidelines were approved by the CPM state committee in August.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CPM politburo member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and state secretary A Vijayaraghavan will address Saturday’s meeting. On Sunday, a meeting of additional private secretaries, assistant private secretaries and personal assistants of ministers will be held with the same agenda. The CPM state committee in August had laid down a plan of action for ministers and their personal staff.
“Comrades in the government should discharge day-to-day governance in adherence to the party’s vision,” its document had said. A standard operating procedure (SOP) for routing recommendations from the party to ministers was also formulated. It authorised only the district committees to forward recommendations to the ministers. This time, CPM took care to appoint senior party functionaries as private secretaries to ministers.
CPM views private secretaries as the CEOs of the minister’s office and wants them to be the single contact point. Personal staff have been asked to be careful while dealing with public and show humility and simplicity for upholding the party’s principle.
“People’s tendency to find happiness through power needs to be dealt with sternly. Power shouldn’t be used for enforcing personal agenda,” the CPM state committee document had warned. Sources said recent controversies in which senior government officials were trapped will be cited as examples to stress the need for the personal staff to keep a distance from all dubious persons.