CEAN advocates equal opportunity for all qualified people

Our Correspondent

Kohima, May 21 (EMN): Civil Engineers’ Association of Nagaland (CEAN) on Saturday said the association wants equal opportunity for employment as per the service rule of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (P&AR), government of Nagaland.

This was relayed to journalists, following the association’s 32nd General meeting held at Conference Hall, DUDA Guest House, High School Kohima.

The outgoing CEAN President and a core member of CEAN LC, David Phom said the association wants the government to bring out the vacancy under the purview of Nagaland Public Service Commission (NPSC) in the respective engineering department through Right to Information (RTI) 2005.

While he asserted that it will watch over the transparency and accountability in the recruitment process for both NPSC and Combine Technical Service Examination (CTSE).

Phom continued that the CEAN under the banner of Combine Technical Association of Nagaland (CTAN) opposes backdoor appointments and stated that it supported Nagaland Staff Selection Board to conduct fair exams of all the non-gazetted posts.

An ex-officio member of CEAN, Taiwan Konyak informed that CEAN was established in 1990 and in collaboration with CTAN and other engineering branches, it uses RTI as a weapon to voice out against the illegal and backdoor appointments and reiterated that it supports NSSB for fair and transparency.

He asserted that CEAN will continue to pursue its objective of eradicating backdoor appointments.

It informed that as per 2019, CEAN has 371 registered members among more than thousands civil engineering graduates.

Meanwhile, LC David Phom urged the civil engineering graduates to come forward and get enrolled and support the association in its future goals.

Further it was supplemented that there are eight Junior Engineer (JE) contracts under PHED, one JE and SO under Water resources, one JE under New and Renewable resources department, besides more than 45 SOs appointed illegally under PWD.

Meanwhile, Meshenlo Kath, convenor of CTAN reiterated that the association aims to bring about equality, transparency and provide equal opportunities for all qualified people.

He asserted that since 2016, CTAN has submitted appeal letters to all the 76 departments in the state to pursue requisition of posts through NPSC (which is still continuing), adding that it is firmly against backdoor appointment and have been trying to terminate all the illegal appointees.

Kath maintained that in the month of February, it had terminated two junior soil conservation officers (JSCOs) under the department of Soil and Water Conservation and still more are yet to be terminated under various departments – seven under Forest department (Forester); two SO under Agriculture department and 52 lecturers under Technical Education department.

The convenor questioned the reply it received and said, ‘What does open departmental exams mean? This is just open corruption. We don’t want such kind of things to happen and we have been trying to at least give opportunity to the deserving people, that is our motive and we have been doing and will continue to so’.

Moreover, there is no question of contract appointment, the departments do not follow the rules and regulations of P&AR that requires all the posts with the grade pay of INR 2800 and above to be sent to NPSC for open examination, he stated.

Further, he asserted that NPSC has the right to question all departments under Nagaland and asked requisitioning of those vacancies, Adhoc, contract and also those posts that are likely to be vacated in the next 12 months to avoid contract appointments.