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The employees, from
fourth class to the top bureaucrats, desire, and strive to get reemployment
after retirement. This is more so for the last few years. Most of them become
successful. It’s not true that those officers or employees are more efficient,
and indispensable. There are no cogent reasons for an employee to increase his
efficiency in the last five years before his retirement than what efficiency he
has after twenty-five years in government service.
One officer was looking
after legal affairs in a department. Since no substitute was found to manage
law as efficiently as he did, the government did not transfer him and he stayed
there for more than twenty years. He was expecting reemployment after his
retirement, but he was not considered. It’s a fact the criteria for
reemployment are not only good work or efficiency, but something other. One has
to satisfy the higher boss or the authority; and the authority is not satisfied
only with your work, but for some other traits and services. The aforesaid
officer did not have the other qualities.
Another example: One
officer does not stand straight before the secretary or the minister; always
stands bending, making at least his torso forty-five-degree angle to his lower
part of the body below his waist. He never says no to what the higher officers
or the ministers say. On the other hand, he directs his subordinate to do the
job saying the secretary or minister desires. If it is not within the purview
of law, he does not have scruples to bend the law. He is reemployed after his
retirement, has already worked for four years post-retirement, and still
working. Examples are galore of such officers getting reemployment.
(Published in the Prameya)
The officer with
propensity to please the boss cannot remain impartial, cannot do justice to the
public. One gets promotion in government service after one senior retires on
superannuation or if one dies in service, making a post vacant, on the basis of
entries by the higher authorities in his confidential conduct record (CCR).
It’s natural the flatterer, the officer with an instinct to please the higher
ups gets outstanding entries in CCR, irrespective of whether or not he is a
worker or a shirker. In the prevailing system, reemployment has adverse impact
on the administration. If someone discharging his duty is not rewarded, how can
he have the motivation to work? He will
resort to what the officer who stands bending his body before the authority,
does.
The Chief Minister, after
he was sworn in, told the press sixty-two thousand post of teachers and above
two lakh posts in government were lying vacant. An additional secretary’s
salary per month, on an average, is one lakh and fifty thousand rupees. If he
is reemployed after retirement, he gets pension minus salary which comes to around seventy-five thousand rupees. Besides, he enjoys the facilities of a chauffeur
driven car, services of peons, personal assistants, etc. In place of
reemployment, a fresh officer can be recruited; an unemployed youth can get
employment.
The identity of an
officer is the post he holds in government, and the power that goes with the
post. The identity, he feels, is lost on his retirement. He does not get the
benefits of free use of car, peon or a personal assistant. He cannot afford all
those with his pension. He also loses the power of the post. Hence, he needs
the job after he is retires. The authority also needs the kind of officers who
does not object, but works to satisfy him and to his requirement. The unhealthy
honeymoon of the authority and subservient goes on well. The need of the time
when there is large unemployment, is to break this tradition.
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