Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday approved abolition of 9,304 posts in the Military Engineering Service as part of a mega reform process aimed at enhancing combat capability of the armed forces and re-balance military expenditure, officials said.
There will be no job losses in view of the decision as theposts identified for abolition are lying vacant for last three years, theysaid.
The Military Engineer Services (MES) is a premierconstruction agency which operates under the Corps of Engineers of the IndianArmy. It is one of the largest construction agencies in India with a totalannual budget of around Rs 13,000 crore.
The decision is in sync with recommendations made by acommittee headed by Lt Gen DB Shekatkar (retd) to carry out mega reform in thethree armed forces.
“The proposal to abolish 9,304 posts in MES out of thetotal 13,157 vacancies of the basic and industrial staff has been approved bythe defence minister,” a defence ministry spokesperson said.
He said the decision is in line with the recommendationsmade by the Shekatkar Committee as well as based on the proposal of theEngineer-in-Chief of the MES.
“One of the recommendations made by the committee wasto restructure the civilian workforce in a manner that the work of MES could bepartly done by departmentally employed staff and other works could beoutsourced,” the official said.
The recommendation by the high-level committee was aimed atmaking MES an effective organisation with a leaner workforce, well equipped tohandle complex issues in the emerging scenario in an efficient and costeffective manner.
In August 2017, the defence ministry approved 65 reformmeasures for the Indian Army, which included redeployment of nearly 57,000officers and personnel of other ranks, based on the recommendations of theShekatkar Committee.The reform measures included optimisation ofsignal establishments, closure of military farms and army postal wing in peacelocations, as well as restructuring of repair echelons, including baseworkshops.