2,500 GP employees’ jobs axed

Mangaluru: The state government has passed an order to cancel the appointment of employees appointed by a few gram panchayat through their regular meetings as well as special meetings.

Not limited to this, the order has also directed to initiate proper action against the PDO, president and vice president of the panchayat who gave opportunity for such appointment. Thus, as per the order, close to 2,500 employees in the state, who were appointed without prior permission are going to lose their jobs.

The Government passed an order on Mar 12^th 2018, completely halting the GP’s from appointing anybody for any post. In case the posts of bill collector, clerk/data entry operator and attender become vacant due to retirement, promotion or any other reason, the CEO of the GP must take prior permission to appoint anyone to the vacant post.

Normally, there are vacant posts for clerk, bill collector, attender, cleaner, pump operator and pump conductor in the GP’s. In order to appoint someone to these posts, a request must be sent to the concerned GP’s CEO with proper reasons.

After getting prior permission from here, the selection of the candidate for the appointment to the vacant post may be carried after publishing a media publication and following several other rules. But in some GP’s , the rules are ignored and the appointment is decided by the GP itself. The government has specified that this is in violation to the law.

For violation of the rule and illegal appointment of the work force, legal action will be initiated against the PDO of the GP under the Karnataka Civil Service (CCA) Act of 1957 and action will also be taken against the president, vice president and the members of the concerned GP under Karnataka Gram Swaraj and Panchayat Raj law. For any mistake at any phase, the PDO and the concerned TP CEO will be held responsible, states the order.

“At some GP’s appointments are conducted without the permission of the ZP. Such incidents have occurred at two GP’s in DK district and letter has been written to the government to initiate action against the concerned GP’s president,” informed DR R Selvamani, Dakshina Kannada Zilla Panchayat CEO

“No worker must be removed from their job. They should be provided job security. Action should be taken against those who have taken the decision to appoint in violation to the law even though they knew of it,” said Deviprasad Bolma, Karnataka State GP Standing Committee President