Kozhikode: At a time when hectic activities are on to regularize the services of staff before the end of the current government’s tenure, information received through RTI query has indicated that various departments in the state alone have 1,17,267 temporary employees.

This figure is only that of the staff who receive their salaries through Spark Software.

The information about the temporary staff was received on an RTI query regarding details of the temporary, contract and daily wage employees who had received salary via Spark in January 2020. The RTI query was filed by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee secretary C R Pran Kumar before the finance department.

However, the finance department has not given out details of the amount paid as salary to the temporary staff.

If the contract, daily wage staff employed with public sector undertakings, semi-government establishments, board corporations functioning with own fund, local bodies department and universities who do not receive a salary through Spark Software, are also taken into account then the number of temporary staff would come to 2.5 lakh.

The statistics are coming out at a time when there is a strong move to regularize the temporary staff before the completion of the LDF government's tenure in office. Even though the validity of several rank lists prepared by the Public Service Commission has expired, new rank lists have not come into existence owing to Covid related issues. Taking advantage of the situation there is a move for large-scale backdoor appointments in various departments.

During the previous Congress-led UDF Government’s tenure, there were 25,136 temporary staff in government services in the 2012-13 period. Majority of these employees were sacked soon after the LDF Government came to power in 2016. Such a large number of people have been employed on a temporary basis since then.

The appointments made on a temporary basis are more than double the number of jobs given through the Public Service Commission in Kerala during the last four years.

The appointment of 1,33,132 persons was recommended via PSC till April 30, 2020.