With an eye on the Assembly elections due early next year,the SAD-BJP government in Punjab now wants to lure the employees by regularising nearly one lakh daily wage,work charged and contractual staff working in various departments,boards and corporations. The personnel department of the state government has now sought information for number of such employees in each department and likely expenditure to be involved in regularising them within one week so that the government can take an early decision. In a communiqué,all the heads of the departments have been asked to give maximum priority to submit the information at the earliest otherwise they would be held responsible. They have been directed to send information by hand. The unexpected hurry shown by the ruling party stems from the fact that if the elections were announced by the Election Commission of India they would not be able to announce free-bee to the employees. In a related development the state government is also thinking of expediting recruitment to fill all the vacant posts in various departments. In another letter,the personnel department has sought information from all departments on vacant,skilled and non skilled posts in each department so that a decision could be taken to fill those. The SAD-BJP government is working overtime to lure the employees who can play an important role in shaping the public opinion ahead of the polls. Since last few days Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and his principal secretary had been meeting delegations of employees of different departments and announcing acceptance of their demands,including substantial enhancement in their pay scales. The employees are making most of this opportunity. Sources said that the monthly salary bill of the state government is around Rs 900 crore for the 4.50 lakh employees and as vacant posts will be filled and other employees regularized the bill is expected to rise many fold. Till last year state government had banned the recruitments citing poor financial health of the state. Surinder Singh,Chairman,Punjab Employee Welfare Board,said,There are about 4.50 lakh employees of the state government,boards and corporations. The government has plans to regularise contractual and daily wagers as there are one lakh such employees,but the cost of their regularisation will run in more than Rs 1000 crore. The employees with minimum experience of three years should be immediately regularised as we have been raising this demand for last four years. In March this year,in forest,public health,health,mandi board,local bodies,education some 9,000 employees were regularised. We hope that the government will regularise more employees.
