Proposal for Common Kerala Engineering Services Exam for recruitment to public bodies

Proposal for

Common Kerala Engineering Services Exam

for recruitment to public bodies

We propose a recruitment process for engineers in the State and Public sector in the Kerala State, that is similar to the Indian Engineering Services (IES) exam conducted by the Union Public Service Commission for recruitment of engineers in the Central government organizations.

The Kerala Public Services Commission (Kerala PSC) may conduct Kerala State Engineering Services exam annually to recruit engineers in various streams and allocate them to various government and public sector organizations under the State government.

Problems with the Present System:

Present recruitment system has many disadvantages:

Repeated, Delayed, Non-uniform, Uneconomical Recruitment process: There are many State government and public sector organizations in Kerala that have engineers working in them. At present the PSC has to recruit engineers separately in all these organization as and when they report vacancies. The PSC has to conduct a number of recruitment tests to select eligible candidates. The cost and effort of this process is more than common recruitment exams conducted annually. The recruitment process of each organization takes many months and years to complete.

Injustice to young engineering graduates in the State: Young engineers passing out of the engineering institutions have to wait for many years for entering the government service. The best talents are thus lost to public service as they seek out other employment in the private sector, in India and abroad. Thus, a lot of young engineers are deprived of the opportunity to work in the government and public organizations

Efficiency of the public service adversely affected: In individual organizations this once is a decade or two recruitment process creates a lot of problems that adversely affect their efficient functioning.

• Huge time gap between successive appointments in any organization: In the present system recruitment take place only once in many years or even decades and when it happens they do it in bulk numbers. There is a huge gap of years between two successive batches of officers.
• Top posts perpetually occupied by non-merit and non-PSC candidates: During the long interval between consecutive PSC recruitments, that spans many years and even decades, a number of engineers enter the service through non- PSC means. These engineers get extra advantage in promotions and most of them reach the top-most posts and remain at the top posts for many years, while the PSC recruits suffer lack of promotions and opportunity to reach top posts. Candidates appointed through main PSC exams, particularly those in the merit, rarely get opportunity to reach top posts.
•  Promotions issues and Court cases: There are a number of cases filed in the High Court from time to time regarding promotions. Many of these arise due to absence of a common recruitment and promotion rule, based on qualifications, work experience and other criteria.
•  Career stagnation severe: The present lacunae in recruitment results in same batch engineers occupying widely different hierarchical positions in the service. While the engineers in the top of a PSC list reach top posts those at the bottom still remain un-promoted and often in the post of entry.
•  Posts remaining vacant for long time: Many posts remain vacant for a long time, and as a result the public works suffer.
•  Experience and knowledge transfer does not take place: Since the same aged persons occupy all posts from top to bottom, and they retire together within a short interval of time, there will be less transfer of experience and knowledge of department procedures to subsequent batches of engineers. This affects efficiency of functioning.
• Line of authority affected: The efficiency of the department suffers when more or same qualified and aged persons occupy junior posts, as it affects the command line. 
• Higher human resources cost: Officers with high salary scales occupy junior posts, thus increasing the human resources cost of organizations.
• Employee frustration high: Lack of promotion opportunities, absence of efficient leadership, irrational promotion issues all affect employee morale
• Officers get superceded by juniors from other categories of recruitment: It is common in many State organizations that officers get superceded by juniors, who are less qualified and lesser years of services.

Advantages of introducing annual common engineering services exam for recruiting engineers to the state and public sector organizations

• This ensures uniform method of recruitment across all public sector bodies. 
•  Delay in recruitment is eliminated and posts will not remain vacant for long. 
•  The citizens and the taxpayers get the brightest engineers to work in the public services because every year fresh graduates get opportunity to enter services.
• Young graduates get opportunity to enter services every year, thus reducing unemployment and frustrations
• Better control over recruitment process and consequently eliminating chances for corruption and nepotism in individual organizations.
• A large number of organizations could be brought under the common recruitment process.
• Smaller organizations and non-engineering organizations with engineering wings too get benefited because they too get the best candidates for appointment.
• Every year there would be retirement of a batch of engineers and consequently the junior batches get promoted, thus enhancing promotion opportunities in the services. This reduces employee frustrations with regard to promotions.
• Chances of less qualified, less experienced and less aged candidates superseding officers get reduced and this reduces the number of court cases.
• Better efficiency is achieved in public services work execution due to elimination of existing problems in human resources management
• The cost of human resources reduces since the junior posts get occupied by fresh candidates rather than those facing career stagnation working in higher payment scales.

The list of Kerala Public Sector organisations are available from the following link. Those organizations that have separate engineering wing or engineers as staff are not known

https://kerala.gov.in/public-sector-undertaking

List of government departments in Kerala State

https://kerala.gov.in/web/guest/government-departments1

List of Field departments

https://kerala.gov.in/web/guest/field-departments

List of Engineering and Medical colleges

https://kerala.gov.in/web/guest/government-engineering-colleges-medical-colleges

List of Local Bodies in Kerala