‘Panchayats must have CEO, engineers for key functions’

NEW DELHI: With panchayats woefully short in handling functions and finances that cash-intensive development schemes have brought under their mandate in recent years, an expert committee has recommended that they should have a “full-time CEO” and “engineer” to discharge administrative and technical work.

The recommendation forms part of a raft of radical changes that the committee has made about staffing and recruitment process of panchayats, saying they were required to beef up the quality of work done by village governments which handle multi-million schemes like MGNREGA, rural roads programme (PMGSY) and National Rural Livelihoods Mission among others.

The panel said that panchayats are not equipped to handle the workload relating to three key areas – engineering, accounting and data entry – which has increased manifold in recent years.

Every central scheme sets aside a percentage of funds towards “administrative costs” which would total to a whopping Rs 9,153 crore in 2017-18. The Bose panel has recommended that ministries should also fix a percentage for HR.

To address the deficiencies in panchayats, the committee has said that every village panchayat should have a full-time “secretary”, who should be a graduate. He should be a permanent employee and function as its “chief executive” incharge of administration, including service delivery, citizen interface, finance and accounts.

Also, every panchayat should have a “technical assistant” to carry out its engineering functions. While for panchayats with a population of less than 10,000, the “gram rozgar sahayak” (which exists in every panchayat) can be trained as “barefoot technician”, the bigger panchayats should recruit a qualified employee with diploma or degree in engineering.

The village panchayats require technicians with knowhow about common functions related to rural development schemes.

The “committee on performance based payments for better outcomes in rural development schemes”, headed by former finance secretary Sumit Bose, found that support staff in panchayats was sub-optimal across states. The appointments are also done randomly without strict stress on merit.

Underlining that “recruitments should be transparent, merit-based, fair”, the panel has said they should be done by “formal state institutions” like State Public Service Commission. Also, it has recommended that computer literacy be made mandatory for all employees up to Group C.