SENTINEL VIEW: Of holidays, work culture and salary burden

Inefficiency and poor work culture have led to the piling up of over one lakh files in the State Secretariat and the State Government had to launch a special mission called Project Sadbhavana to clear the pending works.

The State Government granted a special two-day holiday to its employees to enable them to spend 'quality time with parents/in laws' in the first week of January as part of its efforts to provide extra incentives with the hope that employees would give their hundred per cent in their performance to make government offices responsive and caring to the general public. The employees avail casual leave and earned leave for such purposes. In addition to that, the State Government also added four new holidays in 2022. In 2021, there were 30 gazetted holidays, besides the notified restricted holidays. In 2022, Holiday List - four new gazetted holidays on account of Bathou puja, Karam puja, Bhatri Dwitiya and Chhat Puja – have been added. Besides, there will be two half-holidays - on August 9 on account of Muharram and on October 9 on account of Lakshmi puja. While the employees are also entitled to avail themselves of two more holidays from the list of 31 notified restricted holidays, Deputy Commissioners can declare local holidays for one day. The outgo from the state exchequer for payment of salaries to the State Government employees has increased by over Rs 10,000 crore over the past five years, but the mismatch between the salary hike and work culture in government offices has become costly for taxpayers.

The State Government spent Rs 29,255 crore for payment of salaries to its employees in 2020-21 against Rs 19,210 crore spent in 2016-17. The expenditure for payment of pension to retired employees has also increased to Rs 9,293 crore in 2020-21 from Rs 6,565 crore in 2016-17. However, a section of government employees is least bothered to reciprocate such gestures by improving work culture in their offices to justify such hikes at the cost of taxpayers.

While the taxpayers have to shoulder the burden of salary and pension hikes, the general public visiting most government offices for official works often have to wait for hours for the arrival of officers and employees. Often, they have to return without being able to meet the employee concerned for days together. Even when they can meet the officer or the employee then they would simply ask the visitor to come after a few days or next week without even taking the trouble of looking at the files. The taxpayers are required not just to bear the burden of salary hikes they also have to cough up the money in multiple visits to offices to get their work done.

Surprise visits by ministers and senior bureaucrats also reveal how the late arrival of some officials and employees and some going on unauthorized leave compel the general public to return without getting any service. Such employees take the advantage of failure on the part of the administration to strictly enforce biometric attendance and proportionate automatic deduction in salary, any delay in arrival or for leaving before the close of office hours. A few years back, the biometric system of attendance was installed in the State Secretariat only to roll back to the earlier system following pressure from the employees. Since biometric attendance is the order of the day in all Central Government and public sector companies, why should the State government employees oppose it tooth and nail?

Effecting salary hikes across the board out of sync with the performance of individual employees allows the 'inefficient and insincere employees' to take home salaries without any accountability. This 'demotivates' the efficient and sincere employees. Administrative reforms will remain a mere slogan if the employees do not make concerted efforts to improve work culture in government offices.

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