The Uttar Pradesh government has decided to formulate a comprehensive policy for hiring staff through outsource route and protecting their interest with the implementation of the labour laws.
Besides public sector organisations, almost all the government departments have hired staff by outsourcing them through HR firms.
The move to frame a policy for outsourcing employees has been prompted by the protest by contractual employees of UP Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL) who are trying to form a labour union. The employees, called ‘Samvida karmachari’, earlier this month staged a demonstration demanding regularisation of their services and end to exploitation by the contractors.
UPPCL has over 50,000 contractual employees.
Official sources said the new policy being hammered out primarily aimed at pre-empting the exploitation of outsourced employees and streamlining the entire outsourcing process in different government departments.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had recently reviewed the proposed outsourcing policy for services and human resource function. He had directed officials to ensure that the policy was pragmatic and facilitated hassle-free payment of wages and other benefits to the employees.
He also underlined that the service providers tasked for outsourcing should be mandated for the general welfare of outsourced staff vis-à-vis medical facilities, wages etc.
The new policy will also require service providers to submit a copy of agreement with the outsourced employees so that the state authorities could also take steps to protect their interests at large and prevent their exploitation.
Meanwhile, the state government is also taking suggestions and feedback from various state employee organisations for incorporating them in draft policy before it is sent to the cabinet for approval.
Of late, a large number of recruitments in various government departments are increasingly being done through outsourcing. Since, there is no special policy for the purpose, the matrices of wages and the renewal of outsourced employees is rather opaque and in many instances creates controversies. It also purportedly leads to the harassment of youth in the name of jobs, while there is minimum job security and growth prospects.
Recently, the process of such recruitment in class IV grade at the collectorate and tehsil levels had come under cloud and was later scrapped.
UP state employees’ leaders have welcomed the move, saying it is a good step on part of the state government to formulate a comprehensive policy for the outsourced employees.
Power employees leader Shailendra Dubey said the had already demanded regularisation of all outsourced employees. “If all the employees cannot be accommodated as regular employees then the government should ensure that the contractual employees get all the benefits of the labour laws, including minimum wages, leave and medical benefits,” Dubey said,
Earlier, NITI Aayog had in April 2017 suggested outsourcing of public services to pare dependence on the government administrative machinery. It had even recommended induction of specialists through lateral entry to spur competition in bureaucracy.
The NITI Aayog had surmised that dependence on government administrative machinery for the delivery of public services needed to be cut wherever possible.
The draft report was then circulated among the NITI Aayog Governing Council (comprising chief ministers) for possible action.
