A.P.Government Retrenches PSU Staff To Accommodate Ad-Hoc Deputation Officers: A Handiwork Of Vested Interests

A.P.Government Retrenches PSU Staff To Accommodate Ad-Hoc Deputation Officers: A Handiwork Of Vested Interests
(A Story on Chandrababunaidu’s Machiavellian Machinations)

Pandering to the World Bank’s blood thirst (excessive desire for laying off staff) for employees, Chandrababunaidu, the power-hungry, back-stabbing, Machiavellian CM formulated a plan to retrench Government staff.

Although the aim was to retrench unproductive, non-responsive government staff, he guessed that Government employees would not take such reforms kindly; he predicted a strong backlash. To get round this, the only way out for him was to cut the personnel of PSUs who were poorly unionized. The blind, retrenchment-hungry World Bank was shown how the Government cut the government personnel.

Massive retrenchment was launched no matter how unfair, unwarranted and implausible that exercise was. Organizations, as a result, were weakened. Dr. YS Rajasekhara Reddy also tried to follow suit. But he panicked at the specter of losing his job as it was the case with Chandrababunaidu.

Chandrababunaidu, to be brief, concentrated all his energies on retrenchment; even in the court cases dealing with prejudice, he saw that the retrenchment was not halted under any circumstances no matter how outrageous and cruel it was; he asked the PSUs to engage very expensive Advocates. For instance, in Serifed’s case, a former Advocate General was engaged to argue against the case filed by a handful of employees; as if it was not enough, he instructed the State Advocate General to be present at the time of argument. It was a bizarre, savage-sounding scene that two Advocate Generals were present for a case filed by as few as 6 employees that too on prejudicial grounds; the final output is the discharge of all the employees; the saving grace is that the cases were kept open for final hearing; by now, five years flew off but the discharged employees are still finding it difficult to get the case for final hearing.

Such an overbearing administrator who was out and out for retrenchment took a U-turn now to say that he is not for retrenchment! That is the definition of Machiavellianism and Hypocrisy.



Another angle to the story of Chandrababunaidu’s (government’s) retrenchment carnage is that retrenchment is not done in the departments where there is real need; there are excessive personnel and they have to be laid off; but they are not; moreover, more personnel are selected regularly; take for example, the officers and staff in the Department of Cooperation or Revenue or Sericulture, most of the officers of these departments are on deputation to other departments and PSUs, which means that in their own departments they have no permanent jobs/posts. We call them deputationists. They remain government servants just for the reason that they occupy temporary jobs in PSUs or other departments; no need to say that they have to be retrenched. Further worse, new posts are created and selections made just based on these ad-hoc posts to be filled by personnel on deputation.

An important harm the officers (working in host organizations on deputation) are doing to their host organization is that because of them, PSUs are run on ad hoc basis, which is a measure of a disastrous lack of professionalism. Besides, the native employees (the employees of the host department) are demoralized for lack of promotions and the utter disregard for professionalism. The governments are stupid enough not to notice this trend. Probably, vested interests have their way! The staff of the PSUs is bearing cross and sadly retrenched when government staff has to be laid off just because government is run by vested interests! In nutshell, posts are created and protected where there is no need and PSUs which require people are deprived of their hands!

Strangely, this Chandrababu is today ranting and raving that people are affected by the rule of DR.Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy because of the rampant corruption, and so YSR be dethroned. But Chandrababunaid should realize that we were more seriously affected by his retrenchment practices than the corruption of YSR’s Regime. If he says that he will not retrench Government staff, who will believe such promises particularly from a person who very brutally retrenched the staff and who stabbed in the back of his own father-in-law who gave power.