(This is the seventh part of the Malayala Manorama series 'Government Jobs: Playbook of Nexus and Nepotism'. Read Part 1 here: Backdoor appointments cost the public money and the government its face. Part 2: In Kerala’s IT department, job offers come tailor-made for candidates. Part 3: New-age commissars rule Chief Minister’s Office. Part 4: Public sector management is family business in Kerala. Part 5: Nepotism runs from top to bottom. Part 6: Contracts of injustice: Favourites in, common man out. Part 7: The mirage of Kerala PSC rank list: How candidates are left to live in hope)
If you thought ministers and the chief secretary are in charge of the affairs of the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram, nothing can be far from the truth. The nerve centre of the state administration is in the firm grip of employee union leaders. Nothing moves in the secretariat without their knowledge and approval. Anyone standing up to the organised unions will be shown their place. Find a place in their good books and you will find your way up the career ladder.
Riding on the collective bargain power, peons have been promoted to secretariat assistants and even officers.
Union leaders get new posts created to fit themselves in. Even fake degree certificates come handy to ensure promotions. Employees who rise to positions of power through such underhand deals get to control the top offices in the state with hardly any checks.
While the political establishment dishes out favours to their dependents by employing people as consultants at will, the secretariat is a different ball game. Union leaders get a free rein in promotions and transfers in the secretariat.
The Law Department found itself at the centre of a controversy when a Kerala Public Service Commission rank list for the appointment of legal assistants was undermined recently. More shocking was another scandal engineered in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A union leader once accused of forging his degree certificate was promoted as a deputy secretary in the department.
Originally appointed as a peon, the union leader became a legal assistant, but the public services recruiter found out that the degree certificate produced to back the application for promotion was fake.
The PSC recommend his removal but his connections in the union protected him. He was eventually promoted as an under secretary and recently a deputy secretary.
The union leader's career growth was spectacular. In 2004, he was a security guard and peon in the Government Medical College before joining the secretariat as a last-grade employee.
While applying for the post of a legal assistant, he claimed that he had got a law degree from the Bharatiya Vidya Peedhom deemed university in Pune. Though he claimed he was a regular student, it emerged that he worked in Kerala during the period. The PSC wanted the Kerala government to fire him. What he got was a double promotion.
He has company. Another leader who works in the General Administration Department is also under a shadow for dubious claims on educational qualifications.
He was working as a typist when his post was changed to an assistant. According to the records from his stint as typist, he has only passed the tenth-grade exam.
However, as an assistant, his records state he has a degree.
More strangely, there is no proof of him passing pre-degree exams.
The question is how did he manage to get a degree without passing pre-degree, assuming that the degree certificate was not faked.
Ease of deals
The government has sought the services of KPMG as part of its 'ease of doing business' strategies. The contract was extended to a year in August. The extended contract includes the provision for the addition of two more consultants, who cost the government Rs 2.9 lakh and Rs 2.7 lakh, respectively. This is in addition to two KPMG consultants who draw the same remuneration. The four KPMG consultants cost the government Rs 11.2 lakh every month.
The state government relied on a consultancy even for a feasibility study on the recommendations of the Loka Kerala Sabha's West Asia chapter held on February 15 and 16, 2019. There was no letters of interest invited. The authorities justified the decision as a special case which needed timely action. It was promptly regularised.
If these instances were not outrageous enough, consider this one. When PwC opened its office in the secretariat in 2018, transport principal secretary K R Jyothilal's note listed out the costs per consultants. The government was to pay the project management expert Rs 3.34 lakh per month. KPMG executives in the roles of functional consultant, technology consultant and policy consultant cost Rs 3.02 lakh each. In other words, the services of just four executives cost the government more than Rs 1.5 crore every month, including the Goods and Services Tax (GST). To put it in perspective, the top bureaucrat, the chief secretary, draws a salary of Rs 2.25 lakh.
Moratorium for qualifications
Government departments and agencies frequently create posts to accommodate people who know how to pull strings. What if the favoured candidate's profile doesn't match with the post? Not to worry. You can always form an expert committee to figure a way out. That is exactly what the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) did.
The five-member committee appointed by Kerala government's open software institution tried hard to fit in the contract employees into the requirements of the vacancies. Posts such as professor, associate professor and assistant professor carried with them academic requirements set by the University Grants Commission (UGC). Even though contract employees of the ICFOSS did not meet the requirements they were too influential. So the expert committee came up with a smart plan: to give the employees three years to meet the UGC requirements. Until then their jobs will not be confirmed but they can continue as contract employees.
There is a pattern in the functioning of the ICFOSS, especially when it comes to splurging money. Take, for instance, the decision to shift the institution from the Technopark to another building that cost Rs 13 lakh in monthly rent.
Insider job
Why does the government look for external consultants to get jobs done instead of trusting its own employees? Authorities claim that the execution of novel programmes require external experts since the talent is lacking in the public workforce. The Transport Secretary went to the extent of saying that government employees were not efficient, while recommending PwC as consultants for the implementation of the e-bus project.
Is it really the case? We have enough examples to suggest otherwise. When the Kerala Police decided to start a Facebook page as part of an outreach project one and a half years ago, they did not look for any consultants to ensure efficiency.
Applications were invited from cops ready to take up the unconventional job. From among the volunteers, 56 persons were shortlisted for an aptitude test and interviews. Finally, five candidates were selected to run the social media cell of the Kerala Police. The profile page of the police department on Facebook has more than 14 lakh followers now, thanks to the innovative ideas of the small team.
There are many more instances to prove the efficiency of the talent pool the government has at its disposal, yet the authorities prefer to denigrate the meritorious and hard working employees and go for costly consultants. The prejudice against government employees leads to a situation in which consultants and middlemen roam the corridors of power with identity cards bearing the government seal.
(Prepared by Renji Kuriakose, Mahesh Guptan, V R Prathap, S V Rajesh, M R Hari Kumar, K P Safeena, Jikku Varghese Jacob)