Bhubaneswar, Feb. 18: The Odisha Engineering Service Association has condemned inordinate delay by the state government in restructuring the engineering service cadre.

At a meeting held on Monday, the association said that though the government had agreed to restructure their cadre, nothing had been happened so far.

“Almost all the equivalent service cadres of the state such as the Odisha Administrative Service (OAS), the Odisha Forest Service (OFS) and the Odisha Medical Service (OMS) have been restructured, but no steps have so far been taken with regard to our cadre,” said association president Dwaipayan Pattanaik.

For the past four years, the engineering association has been demanding that engineers should be given the opportunity to head a department. At present, senior IAS officers head most of the departments.

“In the executive body meeting, we have decided to request chief minister Naveen Patnaik to review the status of the assurances, removal of the anomaly in the cadres by brining over the superintending engineer cadre posts to pay band-4. Besides, we have also decided to request creation of new engineering cadres in the panchayati raj department, according to the existing Odisha engineering service rule,” said another member of the association.

At present, nearly 3,000 degree engineers are working with various government departments. “We will go for agitation if our demands are not fulfilled. Earlier, the chief minister had taken a personal note of our demands and given us assurance. But, the red tape seems to have stifled our demands,” said another association member.