Imphal, September 25: State Government has decided to approach the Union Finance Ministry for relaxing the blanket ban imposed on appointment under a memorandum of understanding signed between the two.

A highly placed source said that the move has been taken up by the State Government as the ban is likely give a great impact on the careers of many educated youths in the State.

The MoU on Medium Term Fiscal Reforms was signed between the Union Finance Ministry and the State Government in June, 2002 with a view to improve the sagging financial position of the State.

Since then there has been downsizing of Government Department employees while restriction has been imposed on new appointment.

The source informed that the matter was thoroughly discussed during a joint meeting of the Commissioners and Secretaries some days back with Chief Secretary Jarnal Singh in the chair.

The meeting resolved to relax the ban, even if it could not be lifted completely as it was strongly felt that if all the avenues for new appointment in Government departments are kept sealed, the careers of many educated youths would be affected, the source informed.

The source also emphasized that if the Government do not take up any new recruitment, it might discourage the youngsters to pursue studies and instead result in desperation.

To save the lives of the youths from such impending doom, the State Government will seriously propose for relaxing the ban to the Union Finance Ministry, the source said.

It may be mentioned here that the number of educated job seekers in the State as per records maintained by employment ex- changes are under Matric-36.90 percent, Matric- 35.74 percent, Under Graduate -15.30 percent, BA-6.75 percent, BSc - 2.25 percent, Engineering-0.30 percent, BCom - 0.22 percent, Medical - 0.10 percent, Veterinary - 0.05 percent, Agriculture - 0.11 percent, Law - 0.06 percent, Post Graduate (Arts) - 0.74 percent and Post Graduate (Science) -0.54 percent.

The total number of employed persons in the State stands at around 80,000.As per the MoU, a total of 9200 regular post and 3932 work charged posts have been recognised for retrenchment out of which so far 3480 regular and 3690 work charged posts have been abolished.

Over and above this, around 4466 posts would be abolished as soon as the present incumbents retired from service.

Nine Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) have also been closed following the MoU while employees of two other PSUs have been downsized.

147 employees working in various PSUs have been given voluntary retirement benefits under a scheme and another 103 have been served with Retrenchment packages.

Comment