The East Burdwan zilla parishad has cancelled a tender that invited agencies to supply four civil engineers after questions were raised as to whether the quality of projects would be compromised if they were vetted by engineers hired without following recruitment norms.

The engineering wing of the top-tier panchayat system in East Burdwan district issued a tender notice on March 5, inviting registered agencies to supply four civil engineers — sub-assistant and junior engineers — for one year.

“We had floated a tender to appoint four civil engineers after the district authorities had withdrawn five engineers from the zilla parishad without prior information. As several ongoing projects need to be completed by March 31, we issued the tender. However, we have cancelled the tender because of some technical reasons. We will issue a fresh tender soon,” said Shyamaprasanna Lohar, the sabhadhipati of the zilla parishad.

Sources said the state administration had hired group D employees (peons or computer operators) through government company Webel in the past few years, but no wing of the government had recruited engineers or those in decision-making positions through agencies by floating tenders.

“Some contractual engineers are working with the government, but they have been recruited by the departments concerned following a specified recruitment norm. As they have been hired by the departments, they have certain accountabilities,” said an official.

But recruiting engineers to the zilla parishad through agencies by inviting a tender was a cause of concern as the top-tier of the panchayat system vets and approves detailed project reports (DPRs) prepared by rural bodies, sources said.

“The government would not be able to fix their responsibility if anything goes wrong. At best, the government can blacklist the agency through which the engineers would be appointed,” said a retired bureaucrat who worked as a secretary in the personnel and administrative reforms, the nodal agency of recruiting government employees.

A section of officials explained why the appointment of engineers through agencies was not acceptable.

First, as no responsibility could be fixed against these engineers in case anything goes wrong, no departmental action could be taken against them. Fixing responsibility and departmental action is mandatory in the government procedure whenever anything goes wrong in the system.

Second, it is also not acceptable that government
projects worth crores of rupees are approved and
vetted by employees of outside agencies.

Third, the appointment of engineers bypassing the stringent recruitment process laid down by the West Bengal Public Service Commission could compromise the quality and integrity of the engineers.

Fourth, the government would have to engage senior engineers from the state headquarters to re-verify the DPRs vetted by the engineers appointed from agencies, which is a time-consuming process.

Another official explained that if any organisation floated tenders to buy the services of engineers, the lower bidder would be asked to supply engineers.

“Once the lowest bidder is asked to supply engineers, it is inevitable that the quality of the engineers would be compromised. But in government, we always want the best quality engineers as they handle all major projects that benefit the day-to-day life of common people,” said the official.

Senior government officials said the main target behind such recruitment was to cut down the cost of manpower.

“But this is not acceptable in important positions…. Recruitment to posts of peons and computer operators is a different thing. When it comes to decision-making positions, the government should be more cautious,” said a bureaucrat.

A retired bureaucrat said the temporary appointment of employees in government offices had started on a mass scale in 2012 when more than 3,000 people were recruited to the posts of peons and computer operators in various departments.

“I remember that the department secretaries were present during the interview of the applicants for the group D posts. This is why nobody could claim that the process did not follow a proper system,” he said.