The State government decision to sanction four posts to the Public Service Commission (PSC) against a demand for 320 posts to increase the efficiency and ease its workload has come in for criticism.
The government is reported to have turned a deaf ear to the repeated demand of the commission to enhance the staff strength in proportion to its increasing workload, so that the recruitment process would not be affected. In addition to a demand for 307 posts, the commission had sought 13 more for running the online examination centres.
There are complaints that the government has not responded to the requests for sanctioning posts. A late realisation that the functioning of online centres and other processes will grind to a halt has prompted the government to sanction four posts, a joint secretary, a deputy secretary, an under secretary, and a system analyst for manning the online examination centres.
Routine functions hit
Commission sources told The Hindu here that the government decision to restrict the sanctioning of posts and curb its expenditure had a major bearing on even routine functions such as one-time verification of credentials of candidates who registered their profile online. Scores of applicants turn up everyday for certificate verification. With limited resources, including computer systems and staff, they are being made to wait endlessly for completing the verification process.
Once the commission steps into the task of processing applications for various posts in the uniformed forces, mainly sub inspector, and those which are in great demand among job-seekers such as secretariat assistant and clerks to different departments, the staff would have a harrowing time.
The commission is forced to honour the deadlines for conducting examinations, physical tests, and publication of rank lists with the limited human resource at its disposal. Braving such difficulties, an earnest effort is being made to publish the lists in time. As many as 30 rank lists of examinations conducted at the online centres had been published and there had been no slackness in the recruitment too, sources said.
Sanctioning of posts has been limited on the premise of austerity measures taken by the government.
