Union Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh on Monday said that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) is trying to clear the backlog of promotions accumulated for several years.He was holding discussions with a delegation of Central Secretariat employees who met him here on Monday seeking his intervention for timely promotion of lower grade staff members. The delegation also submitted a memorandum to the Minister on behalf the Central Secretariat MTS Association. "In order to bring in the ease of governance as well as objectivity in empanelments, the government has, in the last three years, improvised upon the procedures so as to ensure that there are no subjective preferences involved in carrying out the promotions. The procedures have been made more hi-tech using sophisticated technology tools to minimize the human interface," Singh said. He said in the past, every government took credit for bringing in a new legislation or rule while this government has done away with nearly 1,500 rules which were either obsolete or had become irrelevant with the passage of time.
"All this is meant not only to ensure effective and timely delivery of outcomes for the public, but also to enable the employees to perform to the best of their ability."Showing his concern towards the employees working in the lowest rung of administration who spend their entire service tenure of 30 to 35 years without securing a single promotion, Singh said he has discussed the matter with senior officers in the Ministry and several innovative means are being evolved to avoid stagnation at middle and lower rungs of administration. He also regretted that in a large number of cases, stagnation in promotions was the result of litigation amongst the employees themselves and even though the DoPT tries its best to put forward its view in the court of law, the delay becomes inevitable.