Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Ousted staff troop in with appeals

By Our Special Correspondent

Chennai July 10. Over 12,000 temporary assistants and junior assistants were recruited all over Tamil Nadu, even as hundreds of ousted "permanent" staff members poured into various government offices to present their appeals against dismissals.

With anguish writ on their faces, scores of staff members at the Secretariat, who were sacked for not attending office on July 2, came in with petitions offering a variety of reasons for their absence on the crucial strike day.

A majority of the staff members, especially women, came up with a stock reason of "sickness" — either they or their close relatives were ill. Several of them also cited weddings and family functions, while some had claimed that employees' unions had threatened them to keep away.

And, to save the staff the embarrassment of an elaborate explanation, a section of the Public department staff members distributed printed sheets, which contained two broad reasons for absence: personal engagements and sickness. All that the dismissed staff had to do was to tick one of the reasons and mark one of the "leave'' options — earned, medical or casual.

With the court verdict on the "staff dismissal case" awaited and time running out for presenting written pleas to the Government against the dismissal, several anxious staff members made a beeline for the Secretariat, District Collectorates and offices of the heads of departments.

Union members wait

At the Secretariat, at least 2000 staff members had presented their appeals, while a majority of the members of the Tamil Nadu Secretariat Association decided to wait for the verdict rather than seek pardon.

"When we have challenged the ordinance, how can we file an appeal under a provision of the ordinance? Moreover, the ordinance is totally silent on how jailed employees can file the appeals within seven days," asks a union functionary.

Section 7 (3) of the recently-promulgated ordinance, amending Essential Services Maintenance Act, provided the staff an opportunity to "approach" the "appointing authority" within seven days of issue of the dismissal orders. As a majority of the Secretariat staff were dismissed on the night of July 4, today was "technically" the last date for filing of appeals.

But, as the dismissal lists were put up on noticeboards of various offices only on July 5, some officials argued that "logically" tomorrow should be the last day. However, there was no final word from the Personnel and Administrative Reforms department, and some of the departments decided to accept the appeals tomorrow too.

In the districts, the dismissal orders were served on July 7 too.

More hands appointed

Meanwhile, on the fourth day of the recruitment drive to fill up vacancies caused by the mass dismissals, the Government appointed another 70 persons in temporary posts at the Secretariat, taking the total to 749.

The Government plans to recruit 1,000 temporary assistants at the Secretariat, and 500 junior assistants each in the Collectorates.

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