the goan I network
PANAJI
The electricity department may have on its roster staff which is far below its ‘sanctioned strength’ but it has been rapped on the knuckles for its salary payouts and its high manpower costs by the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission, the statutory ombudsman for the power sector.
In the fiscal ended March 31, 2019, a whopping Rs 319-odd crores were spent by the department on salaries alone, marginally lower than the Rs 326-odd crores its staff cost in the previous fiscal, power minister Nilesh Cabral told the Goa legislative assembly.
But Cabral, who was responding to a query from Curtorim MLA Aleixo Reginald Lourenco, admitted in his written reply that the JERC has noted that staff costs are high and has directed that employee strength and their deployment be analysed so as to rationalise deployment and reduce costs.
Interestingly, the department has on its rolls a solitary Superintending Engineer, the highest position in the hierarchy, in Chief Electrical Engineer Reshma Mathew, who again is past her superannuation age and is surviving on six-monthly extensions granted by the government from time to time.
The two posts of additional chief engineers are lying vacant and the department also has no other Superintending Engineer on its rolls as against a sanctioned strength of four.
The department is also managing the show with a strength of next in rank - Executive Engineers - which is less than half the sanctioned strength of 27 with just 12 serving in the position, Cabral’s reply said. Of the 191 sanctioned strength of Assistant Engineers, there are 150 in service but junior engineers, who actually man the leg-work in the field are in full strength with 308 of the 313 sanctioned posts occupied, the minister said.
The department is in the process of filling up 15 posts of executive engineers and has also conducted written exam to recruit 32 linemen/wiremen and 20 meter readers. The results of the written tests are awaited, he added.
Cabral also downplayed the effect of the department’s manpower spend on retail tariffs. Manpower cost is an “element” of the aggregate total cost of power distribution and retail tariffs are determined with the goal of recovering the total cost to the department, Cabral said in response to Lourenco’s query whether the high manpower costs were eventually passed on the consumer.
On rationalisation of its staff strenght, Cabral said the department is carrying out the process as suggested by the JERC.
