By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 12, 2017: THE Union Minister of State for DoP&T, Dr. Jitendra Singh, said that the Department of Personnel & Training (DoPT) is trying its best to clear the backlog of promotions which had accumulated for several years. He said, while the Government follows a policy of zero tolerance towards corrupt and non-performing officers, at the same time it is also supportive towards performing officers of integrity.

Dr Jitendra Singh was responding to a delegation of Central Secretariat employees who called on him here today and sought his intervention for timely promotion of lower grade staff members. They also submitted a memorandum on behalf the Central Secretariat MTS Association, wherein it was submitted that many of the lowermost working professionals in the Government of India get deprived of even single promotion during their entire service tenure.

Dr Singh said, in order to bring in the ease of governance as well as objectivity in empanelments, the government has, in the last three years, improvised upon the procedures so as to ensure that there are no subjective preferences involved in carrying out the promotions. The procedures have been made more hi-tech using sophisticated technology tools to minimize the human interface, he added.

He said that in the past, every government took credit for bringing in a new legislation or rule while this government has done away with nearly 1500 rules which were either obsolete or had become irrelevant with the passage of time. All this is meant not only to ensure effective and timely delivery of outcomes for the public, but also to enable the employees to perform to the best of their ability, he added.

The Minister said, he himself personally feels disturbed to come across cases where some of the employees working in the lowest rung of administration spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without securing a single promotion. He said, he has discussed the issue with all the senior officers in the Ministry and several innovative means are being evolved to avoid stagnation at middle and lower rungs of administration.

Dr Jitendra Singh also regretted that in a large number of cases, stagnation in promotions was the result of litigation amongst the employees themselves and even though the DoPT tries its best to put forward its view in the court of law, the delay becomes inevitable.