Ghost appointment probe

Meghalaya secretariat
Meghalaya secretariat

SHILLONG, APR 22:  Meghalaya government has stumbled into “appointments” to some posts in different government departments which are not “sanctioned posts” and could even be “ghost appointment.” While implementing the “Employees & Pensioners Database” the state finance department came across such appointment.

The database is in the process of being completed as the union government had made it mandatory for all the states in the country to have such database of their employees and pensioners so that sanctioning of funds by the union government will be based on such database as it will reflect the expenditure like payment of salaries and pensions to the employees.

According to the Meghalaya finance department OSD PA Sawian the union government made it mandatory for all the state governments to have the “Employees & Pensioners Database” after the 13th Finance Commission said that there are inconsistencies in the state governments’ submission of proposals for fund allocation from the previous years.

The Planning Commission approves the budgetary allocation to the states after the recommendations of the finance commission. After the observation by the finance commission on the “inconsistencies of the states” on expenditure the union government in its directive on 2010 made it mandatory for all the states to have the employees and pensioners database.

As part of the union government’s directive, the Meghalaya government also started to prepare the “Employees & Pensioners Database” from September 2013.

However during the preparation of database the finance department found that some of the departments had appointed employees whereas there were no sanction posts. This not only meant additional expenditure for the state government but a finance department official said such appointment could also be a “ghost appointment.”

On the issue, Meghalaya additional chief secretary BK Deb Varma said as the process of completing the database for all the 1068 state government offices and 54,275 employees, excluding the contractual employees, will be completed by another three months the government will analyze the database to find out how many of such employees – appointed without sanction posts- are working in the different government departments.

Varma told reporters on Tuesday, “The government will analyze the data from all the seven treasuries and five sub treasuries of the state to find out how many of such employees in the different government departments have been appointed.”

Varma informed that once the data are analyzed, the government will institute an inquiry to find about such appointment and also whether the appointments are “ghost appointments.’ – By Our Reporter

You May Also Like

More From Author

+ There are no comments

Add yours