In a significant and strategic manoeuvre aimed at optimising cadre management, the Jal Shakti Department (JSD) has issued formal regularisation orders for 396 engineers across various ranks, with an additional 411 individuals in the pipeline awaiting essential clearances. Many of the beneficiaries of this resultant pay adjustment are retired officers who had previously been receiving pensions at lower ranks. The current LG administration is diligently striving to rationalise the offices, addressing decades of entrenched stagnation that have afflicted every department. The absence of meaningful reforms in the administrative apparatus over the years has resulted in a dire situation where numerous employees have endured an entire career with only a single promotion, often as acting officials. Consequently, despite serving in senior positions for extended periods, they have received compensation commensurate with that of their junior counterparts. This protracted state of affairs has profoundly eroded the morale of the workforce.
The chronic absence of regular departmental promotion committees and the prevalence of promotions devoid of commensurate grading have characterised these decades. This predicament has been further exacerbated by out of turn promotions without regard seniority or merit, leading to a backlog of legal disputes. The situation became so precarious that even Chief Engineers retired with pension benefits equivalent to those of AEEs, an utterly untenable circumstance. Consistently, the absence of time-bound promotions has plagued the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, resulting in senior engineers across various departments assuming multiple responsibilities, including the challenging task of overseeing regions hundreds of kilometres apart. This has severely hampered the operational efficiency of these departments.
In light of this challenging scenario, the initiative undertaken by the JSD is laudable and pivotal. These promotions will empower the department to rise to the formidable challenges posed by the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission, a flagship undertaking of the Government. The reforms have been meticulously directed towards the correct trajectory, and it is anticipated that other departments will soon embark on similar courses of action.
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