Corporate Governance: Andhra Pradesh Govt. Introduces Hire and Fire

April 11, 2008
By Syed Akbar
Hyderabad, April 10: Giving a corporate touch to the State administration, the YSR government has introduced performance-linked incentives and disincentives to the employees involved in the national rural employment guarantee scheme and Indiramma housing programme.
Employees, who put in exemplary performance, can earn up to Rs 6,500 a month as incentive. The non-performers will lose a part of their monthly remuneration and those repeatedly failure to live up to the expectations of the State government will be shown the doors.
This is the first time that the State government has come out with a sort of "hire and fire" scheme for its employees. To begin with, the scheme is now being implemented for NREGS and Indiramma housing employees, who were specially recruited for these two pet programmes of chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy. With elections just a year away and crucial by-elections in Telangana round the corner, the State government does not want the employees involved in these two programmes to be lax.
These employees were recruited under the provisions made in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 in 19 districts where the programme is under implementation. The new hire and fire rules are made applicable to field functionaries overseeing the programmes including additional programme officers, technical assistants, computer operators at mandal level, and field assistants at gram panchayat level.
Since the demand for wage employment in rural areas is relatively more during the agriculture off-season (between February and June), the employees will get incentives/disincentives only during this period. "To meet the labour demand in the season, the commissioner rural development has submitted a proposal of incentives and disincentives in proportion to the increased workload," a senior official in the rural development department said.
K Raju, principal secretary, panchayat raj and rural development, issued orders implementing the new rules. Those failing to meet the fixed target in the first month will not get their pay. If they do not meet the target in the subsequent month too, they will be removed from the service after termination of their contract.
The minimum incentive for a field officer is Rs 1250 a month. It goes up to Rs 6,501 depending on the number of work days generated by them in the area assigned to them. The minimum target is generation of 100 days of employment for a minimum of 50 households per year.