State departments still lax in vacancy reporting

As many as 2,394 vacancies in various government departments remain unreported in Kerala, the Vigilance wing of the state Administrative Reforms Department has found. An investigation by the team found that the vacancies have not been reported to Public Service Commission (PSC).
 

The Vigilance wing constituted to detect fake placements and irregularities in appointments in government service revealed that even vacancies in state secretariat were not reported. It was also found that the several retired hands were still continuing in service on a contract basis. 
 

The irregularities were spotted during the inspections conducted in various departments during December 2016. The state government has decided to conduct another inspection in April and to initiate action against department heads who fail to report vacancies on time. 
 

The first cabinet meeting of Pinarayi Vijayan government had decided to report vacancies on time. However, the departments continued to err and Vigilance conducted the inspection based on some assumptions. It was found that there were almost 3, 000 unreported vacancies. The number of vacancies reported in 2016 went up to 37, 815, from 28, 222 in 2015 and PSC had issued recruitment advice to 37, 530 persons last year.
 

However, a large number of posts in various departments is occupied by people on contract. Unreported vacancies were mainly found in education, electricity, higher secondary and health departments. 
 

The government is developing a new software to tackle unreported vacancies. The software, 'Varam', will detect the vacancies and PSC will get to know about that. The Administrative Reforms Department is planning to take stringent action against department heads who fail to report vacancies on time.

• unreported vacancies
• Public service commission
• PSC
• Administrative Reforms Department
• government jobs
• vacancies in government departments
• job vacancies