Srinagar, Dec 19: The Junior Engineers of R&B department alleged discrepancies in the seniority list is costing them their promotions. Scores of junior engineers said that they were appointed as JEs in the R&B department in February 2015 and as per their seniority, they were supposed to be promoted as AEs but they were left in the lurch due to a “flawed process”.
A delegation of aggrieved JEs told Greater Kashmir that they were appointed in February 2015 and had been working in the department since then.
“In September of the same year, more JEs were appointed who are naturally half a year junior to us. Later in 2019, the seniority list was fixed, and the department without any care gave seniority to juniors, and we were left in the lurch. A few weeks back the promotion list was out, and JEs who are junior to us in the context of appointment were promoted to AEs while we are left to fend for ourselves,” said an aggrieved JE.
The aggrieved JEs said that they bought it to the notice of the concerned official, but no step was taken to rectify the issue. They said before being appointed as JEs in early 2015, they have worked on a contractual basis for seven years in the department.
“We are 6 to 8 years elder to them by age and half a year senior by virtue of appointment. In addition to that, we have given seven more years to the department, but still, injustice was done to us. We are not against anybody’s promotion as they are our colleagues, but we want that our rightful seniority should not go waste. We are going through depression, and we hope that our career won’t be ruined as we have given our best to the department,” said another aggrieved JE.
They said, however, they were left in distress without any fault of theirs. “We recently reached out to officials and urged them to fix this issue. They have assured us of the same, and we hope that justice will prevail,” they said.
Senior officials from the department said that they had issued a tentative seniority list as well. “The aggrieved should have followed the issue accordingly as there is always a tentative list before finalization of seniority,” said an official.
Additional Secretary R&B, Shahid Mehmood, said that they have received a representation in this regard and they will look into the matter.
“We have to look into every perspective. As the list from the recruitment department comes, some of the appointments are withheld for want of documents that may cause procedural delay, but that won’t make the appointee junior. If the aggrieved are talking on merit and they have not got their due seniority, that will be looked into as no injustice will be done to anyone,” Mehmood said.