THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The recruitment ban in Government services is no longer in force, Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan assured the State Assembly on Friday.

Replying to submissions on the subject, he said the Government had sent a directive to the heads of all departments to report vacancies to the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC) immediately. They will do it in a fortnight's time.

He said the Government intended to speed up the recruitment process. "The policy of the LDF [Left Democratic Front] Government is different from that of the previous Government. We will not shatter the dreams of the unemployed youth," he said. Mr. Achuthanandan said the previous Government had frozen recruitment through an order issued on January 16, 2002. This order banned the departments and public sector institutions from reporting vacancies to the PSC.

The United Democratic Front (UDF) Government also constituted a committee of department heads and secretaries to identify `surplus posts' so that these could be either abolished or managed through a redeployment exercise. It further set up a `surplus manpower cell' in the Department for Administrative Reforms to execute the post-abolition/redeployment process.

The cell identified 17,195 posts as surplus and suggested 11,658 of these for abolition/redeployment. The UDF Government decided to abolish 3,570 posts and either abolish or keep as `super numeric' 3,510 posts.

The Chief Minister said that the previous Government had withdrawn the ban on recruitments on November 19, 2003. However, most of the department heads did not take follow-up action on the order withdrawing the ban. The validity of the rank list of the PSC for recruitment varies from one year to three years. However, if a new rank list is published for a specific post one year after the publication of one rank list, the first one will automatically become invalid.

If no vacancy is reported to a specific post within three years of the publication of a rank list by the PSC and no candidate gets employment, the rule permits extending the validity of the rank list either for one more year or till at least one posting is made from the rank list, the Chief Minister said.

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