A government order has imposed restrictions on appointing people to higher-grade jobs in the projects through outsourcing.
The ministry of finance (MoF) issued new outsourcing guidelines on January 01, clearing the way for recruiting of people only in the lower grades, from the 16th to the 20th.
The new guidelines, which have replaced the 2008 version, are applicable to all government and foreign-aided development and non-development projects.
Finance officials familiar with the matter said under the new guidelines, the five grades at the lower level, which mostly consist of peons, messengers, cooks, drivers, lift maintenance people are eligible for the recruitment through outsourcing firms.
They said several hundred higher-grade technical posts are filled by outsourcing.
"Many project directors expressed their reservations about the new order, saying many of them are at the final stage of hiring staffers," said a Finance Ministry official.
Many have circulated newspaper advertisements for appointing higher-grade people like the assistant engineers for the projects, he said.
He, however, said if they fail to recruit through outsourcing then they have the only option of direct method of hiring.
The projects used to hire directly, but experience shows that most of the recruited staffers get their jobs regularised through Court orders as soon as their contracts expire.
In the meantime, the Finance Ministry is likely to revise the guidelines, considering the importance of the development projects.
This kind of higher-grade employment usually takes place in the Local Government Engineering Department, Roads and Highways Department, bridges division, Water Development Board, etc.
Even the posts of sixth-grade people were filled through outsourcing.
The government had issued the guidelines in 2008 for outsourcing for the both development and non-development projects in order to reduce the government burden in terms of paying salaries and pensions.
"We favour outsourcing as firms provide the people and they have no chance of filing cases claiming absorption into the revenue budget," said the official.
Officials at the ministry and development projects said there should have been an inter-ministerial meeting before issuing the guidelines.
The Finance Ministry is now collecting data relating to the existing number of such higher-grade employees and their annual demand for the recruitment.
"We've written to all divisions asking them to provide data on how many people are usually appointed in the project through outsourcing," the official said.
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