37 sign up for govt's golden handshake

Though the total number of employees on the rolls of the Centre is about 3.4 million, senior government officials said the lack of response to the VRS offer was due to the host of riders built in. The department of personnel and training (DOPT) has been able to send only about 300 people to the surplus cell, which is a prelude to VRS.

The public sector banks opened their VRS offer in 2000 and relieved 99,452 employees from all grades by June 2001, out of their total strength of 863,000. The recently announced VRS plan of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has also attracted a response of over 1,500.

The lack of response to the Centre's VRS scheme is mainly because employees have no choice.

Ministries were asked to downsize entire departments and their concomitant staff instead of identifying work areas. In practice, it was found that there was enough justification to continue with almost every department.

Besides, the Cabinet almost destroyed the VRS package by stipulating there would be no upper limit on the number of years an employee could continue in the surplus cell, without opting for VRS. The original proposal was to fix an upper limit of one year. If an employer was not redeployed within that time, he had to take compulsory retirement.

The finance ministry, which was monitoring the follow up of the reports by the expenditure reforms commission has handed over the implementation to the department of personnel and training.

The Centre had planned the VRS as part of the drive to reduce expenditure on government staff in the Budget for 2001-02. It was the final step in the elimination of the government flab, which had kicked off with the appointment of the expenditure reforms commission a year earlier by former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. The expenditure reforms commission submitted 10 reports covering 36 central ministries and departments under the Centre.

Based on these reports, the departments and ministries were supposed to identify surplus staff, and transfer them to thes surplus cell for golden handshake.

The package was also made fairly attractive; as the minimum severance allowance was about Rs 5 lakh. Besides, the employees can draw life long pension in addition to provident fund.

But the ministries have instead chosen the easier way out by shedding unfilled posts. As per answers supplied to the Parliament by the department of personnel and training, of the total 42,000 posts recommended for abolition by the expenditure reforms commission, the ministries have fixed 16,924 posts in 19 departments.

The highest has been in urban development which has cut 6,714 posts, followed by department of mines at 2,918 and department of economic affairs at 1,903.