(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)

A rank list prepared by the Kerala Public Service Commission more than a year ago has never seen the light of the day. The recruitment exam for the posts of reserve watcher and depot watcher was held in 2017 and the rank list was prepared in 2018. S Satheesh, who topped the list, did not get an appointment offer until January 2019. He declined the offer since he had already found a job elsewhere. In such a situation, the rules stipulate that the vacancy has to be reported back to the PSC within 60 days so that the person next in line can be offered the job.

The Forest Department, however, chose not to report the vacancy. The second man on the list, A K Jishnu, has not got an appointment letter even after one and a half years. None in the rank list has been appointed to the service. Job candidates have a daunting task of identifying vacancies and lobbying the authorities to report them. Passing the official recruitment test does not seem to be enough.

By the way, the cabinet decided in November 2019 to confirm the appointment of 35 temporary forest watchers in the Forest Department.  So what was the point of that PSC recruitment drive that never happened?

Among those watchers whose job was confirmed was a person who joined as a watcher at the age of 17. The minimum age to apply for a PSC exam is 18. The Forest Department is also trying to confirm the appointment of 2,351 temporary employees. All this while nicely bypassing the 257 persons who had passed the recruitment test.

It has been two years since an exam was conducted to choose candidates for the post of women civil police officer. The physical fitness test was conducted eight months ago and the certificates were vetted in February. Nothing seems to move on thanks to a problem with the list of male civil police officers.

The list of successful candidates for the post of the male civil police officers was frozen after one of them was found to have been involved in a criminal case. The women’s list was also frozen along with this. Candidates said that they had been told by the PSC that the list had to be suspended following a tribunal order to do so to accommodate two women who were pregnant at the time of the physical fitness test. The tribunal, however, had not ordered a halt to the publication of the rank list.

The PSC has also said that a total of 21 candidates are yet to clear the physical fitness test, apart from the women who had raised plaints. In effect, the PSC has withheld the publication of the rank list pending the clearance of the fitness test by 21 candidates. This is true with most of the rank lists.

Quarantined rank list

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic rages, the Health Department is facing a severe shortage of nurses thanks to the posts that lie vacant. Though thousands of candidates are awaiting appointment letters after having their names on a two-year-old rank list, job offers are given only to temporary workers close to political leaders. There are 10,814 candidates featured on the rank list published in July 2108. Only 1,500 candidates have been appointed in the two years since then.

The Health Department is refusing to report the vacancies to the PSC so that it can offer temporary jobs in accordance with the whims and fancies of the political establishment. The list will expire in another year. As many as 2,700 people were appointed from the previous rank list. Candidates hope that the latest list might result in as many appointments at least.

As many as 13 persons with links to CPM’s senior leaders have been appointed to the Kerala State Library Council. They were initially appointed on a temporary basis through an interim government order. The cabinet looked at their matter in November 2018 and decided to confirm them. The cabinet approved the secretary’s decision to grant the temporary workers promotions and increment even before a final decision was made.

Ten lower-division clerks, two typists and a driver were appointed out-of-turn even as meritorious candidates – shortlisted from 17 lakh applicants – were ignored. The government is looking at the files with proposals to confirm the jobs of hundreds of people appointed temporarily during the term of the previous government.

Fudging numbers

All governments like to brag about the number of people appointed to the government service through the Kerala Public Service Commission. That’s almost always a tall claim. Someone joins the government service only after the PSC sends them an appointment recommendation and the respective department sends them an appointment letter. Not all who receive the recommendation ultimately join the service. The government, however, counts all the recommendations when it boasts about the number of people given jobs.

As many as 1,34,240 persons have been given appointment recommendations by the PSC during the term of the current government. Have all of them joined the service? Absolutely not.

Take the case of the Health Department for instance. The PSC had recommended 1,636 candidates to the post of assistant surgeon. Only 856 of them have joined the service though. The rest of the candidates had declined the offer. Still, the government and the PSC would count those 779 doctors when it lists out the number of people offered jobs through the official recruitment channel.

Though 2,665 people were recommended to the post of grade-two assistant in various government-run companies and corporations, only 1,448 of them were ever appointed.

Declining opportunities

The PSC ranks lists were extended 11 times during the term of the previous government. Almost all rank lists between June 2011 and May 2016 were extended up to four and a half years. The then chief minister received memorandums from the applicants and he put up the matter before the perusal of the government. This was done to prevent vacancies for want of a PSC rank list.

All PSC rank lists have a validity of three years, except for those which concern the uniformed forces. They can be extended to up to four and a half years. They will lapse whenever a new rank list is prepared. The previous government extended the rank lists as much as they can to ensure that a maximum of candidates were assured of jobs.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, however, is opposed to the idea. He said that such extensions would deprive future candidates who are fast approaching the maximum age to appear for PSC exams.

Data suggests otherwise though. A rank list for the Economics and Statistics Department, helmed by the chief minister himself, expired in 2018. Very few appointments were made from this list. No new notification has been made. In the meantime, thousands of temporary workers were appointed to posts that became vacant in the local self-government bodies. Their salaries have doubled. Efforts are on to confirm them.

What is the point of frequent exams without extending existing rank lists? More and more people would be writing the tests but fewer of them actually end up with jobs.

(Reporting by Renji Kuriakose, Mahesh Guptan, V R Prathap, S V Rajesh, M R Harikumar, K P Safeena and Jikku Varghese Jacob)