Though hard pressed to meet the target of constructing 20 km of road per day, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (RTH) has no option but stagger the appointment of technical staff at the entry level to ensure that large-scale vacancies of executive engineers (EEs) and other technical posts are filled in about four years.

Of the total strength of about 40 EEs, 26 posts have fallen vacant at present. Sources said all these posts cannot be filled through appointments and the Ministry would have to wait for the promotion of the assistant executive engineers (AEEs), which is the entry level for the job.

The Ministry has drawn a long-term plan to fill the vacant posts of executive engineers in the next four years by staggering the appointment of AEEs. To that end, the Ministry appointed 23 AEEs last year and 12 this year. It has decided to appoint another 10 AEEs next year.

“The work is not held up in the Ministry due to the vacancies. Of course, the vacancies have overburdened the existing staff,” a senior official said.

He admitted that the projection for requirement of technical staff was not properly done in the past. “As the vacancies did not happen suddenly, similarly they cannot be filled at one go. It will take four years to fill them,” he said.

The vacancies in the engineering wing have piled up in the last four years as the required batches have not been filled up every year. As the recruitment process is also tardy and time-consuming, the Minister has also called for devising a better system for faster recruitment.

According to the existing recruitment process, the Ministry notifies the annual plan for recruitment to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC), which holds All India Engineering Services Examination for filling up the posts of assistant executive engineers at the entry level.

For the senior posts like those of Director General (DG) and Additional DGs (ADGs), the Ministry requests UPSC to hold Departmental Promotion Committees (DPCs).

The UPSC constitutes boards which hold DPCs. Subsequently, UPSC’s recommendations go to the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), which approves the recruitments. “Only after this, the appointments take place. This whole process takes several months,” said a senior official in the Ministry.