Budget figures on count of temporary staff at variance with Spark software tally

Thiruvananthapuram: The appointment of temporary staff for government services is always under scrutiny as the powers that be often place their favourites by violating the norms. Backdoor appointments have been blamed for graft as well as becoming a drain on government coffers by way of salaries and other emoluments.

A Right To Information (RTI) Act query revealed that 1.18 lakh personnel have been appointed on a temporary basis in different government departments. These many staff had received salary for the month of January, 2023, as per the State service and salary portal, Spark. However, the latest budget states that there are only 11,145 temporary employees in the 122 Kerala government departments — a mismatch of 1.07 lakh!

Spark denotes the Service and Payroll Administrative Repository of Kerala. It is an e-Governance initiative of the Finance Department.

Sources in the Finance Department said that the budget records take into account the list of temporary posts created through government orders, while the information given out on the basis of the RTI Act was based on the records prepared for calculating the exact number of temporary workers in different departments and for the payment of their salaries.

Officials said employees, including anganwadi workers, are included in this list of temporary workers.

But, the payment for temporary workers in government departments was linked with Spark from 2017. It is not clear why these figures were not included in the earlier budget records.

Temps abound in Water Resources Dept

The budget records state that there are more temporary workers (4,112) than permanent employees (3,793) in the Water Resources Department. There are 1,291 temporary employees in the Police Department which has a staff strength of 60,515. The Vigilance Department has 593 permanent members and 564 temporary employees.

There are no temporary workers in the General Education Department; it has 1,71,187 employees in all, states the budget records. The records also say that there are only permanent employees in the Tourism Department, while there are temporary workers in guest houses.

The departments of higher education and the health have 30,985 and 37,815 employees, respectively.