Financial crisis: Karnataka government looks to rationalise engineer posts

BENGALURU: Faced with a financial crisis, the government is looking at ways to cut down on expenditure and has trained its focus on "rationalising" manpower, to correct what it believes is largescale "mismanagement" of its workforce.
It is estimated the government spends a staggering 63% of its budget outlay on salaries to its employees — which translates to a total Rs 180 crore a month. A majority of this goes to engineers, some 18,000 of whom are on its rolls, including those attached to civic agencies and boards and corporations.
However, on the other hand, the administration believes there is a shortage of personnel in most departments and continues to hire engineers, each of whom commands a salary anywhere between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1 lakh a month. For example, the PWD department last week put out notice seeking 600 assistant engineers and 300 junior engineers earlier last week.
Mindful of the situation, the state cabinet headed by chief minister BS Yediyurappa, held an informal discussion on the issue last week and proposed a "merger" of posts. The government could bring engineers together under a single department to utilise their services more efficiently.
"While the discussion centred on engineers, it also included a debate on other posts like joint directors in agriculture department and the necessity of regional commissioners in the administrative setup," a senior minister said.
"What is the role of JDs and RCs? It is a total waste of taxpayers’ money and a burden on the exchequer."
The government believes a clean-up is necessary also because ministers and MLAs claim it has become tedious to get work done at constituency level.
"With four or five engineering branches — drinking water, PWD, major irrigation, minor irrigation besides others — at the taluk level, it is hard to get work done. In Bengaluru also, people are confused as to whom to approach since there is the BBMP, BWSSB, BDA etc. A merger may prove fruitful," said another minister, who insisted there is no intention to remove existing engineers.
On a pilot basis, the government is planning to merge engineering divisions of drinking water schemes at the taluk panchayat level and the rural development and panchayat raj (RDPR) department.
However, engineers say such a decision will be detrimental to development.
"Like specialised doctors, we engineers also specialise in irrigation, civil and mechanical works. Any merger will be detrimental," said M Nagaraj, president of Ahimsa, an association of retired and serving government employees from other communities.
Nagaraj also said it will create chaos in promotions as an engineer with five years of service could be ranked above a junior engineer with 20 years of experience waiting for promotion in BBMP.