Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu has initiated steps to regulate and strengthen village secretariats. The government is preparing to adjust the excess staff at the secretariats in other departments.
While continuing the secretariats established during the YCP regime, the government has started the exercise to reform its functioning. A decision will be taken to adjust the remaining staff in other departments by using their services as required.
The government is planning to keep the staff as long as needed and make extensive use of their services. First, it has been decided to adjust the engineering assistants in the village secretariats as AEs in the irrigation department.
It is reported that the Engineer-in-Chief of the Irrigation Department has been instructed to hire 660 people as AEs. At present there are more than 15,000 village -ward secretariats in the state. Of these, currently 1,26,000 are working against the strength of 1,34,000 personnel.
There are more than 8 people on average. Most Secretariats have 10 to 14 members. The government hopes that the shortage of employees can be avoided by keeping only four or five of them in the secretariats and adjusting the rest of the staff in the respective departments.
Apart from irrigation, there is shortage of AEs in Panchayat Raj and Rural Drinking Water Scheme departments also. It seems that these jobs will be replaced with engineering assistants. Village Secretariats became parallel systems to Village Panchayats. The relationship between these two is not clear.
The secretaries in the village secretariats are working under the orders of various departments. A similar situation prevailed in the ward secretariats. The secretaries in them mostly have good relations with the municipal department.
The government has received recommendations to reduce the number of revenue secretaries, town planning- regulation and sanitation secretaries working in ward secretariats. Due to this, now the excitement continues over the decisions taken by the government towards the process of regulating the village secretariat system.
