Even as the Tamil Nadu Uniformed Service Recruitment Board on Tuesday began selecting candidates to fill the existing 13,000 vacancies in the state police department, an alarming number of vacancies was going unfilled in the local administration ministry that governs Chennai corporation and Chennai metro water supply and sewerage board.
Both departments are the lifeline of the city and directly connected with the public; but for the past several years, the Dravidian majors had failed to fill the existing vacancies.
Recruitment of police and teachers has been periodically carried out irrespective of any regime, confirm confidential sources.
According to sources, the Teachers Recruitment Board has been constantly appointing teachers for filling vacancies in schools, engineering colleges and polytechnics.
Besides, more than 400 posts of special teachers for music, drawing and sewing have been filled in the past two years. At present, steps are underway to fill 2,895 posts for postgraduate assistants, sources said.
“For the past two years, there has been no such major recruitment drive to fill the vacancies in the city corporation and metro water.
The situation has worsened after the expansion and the civic body has already outsourced garbage collection and now even fumigation works are outsourced,” said Mr Purushothaman, general secretary, Chennai Managaratchi Pothu Uzhiyargal Munnetra Sangam.
According to rough estimates, the civic body needs 12,000 more employees on the rolls, he added.
There are about 200 metro water depots in the city and most of them are short of field workers who basically clear clogged drains and operate pumping stations.
There is a shortage of around 1,200 field staff and 100 area engineers, disclosed a metro water official.
Interestingly, the animal husbandry department, which is usually ignored, is now receiving some attention due to the free livestock scheme of the government.