The days of Govt hiring temporary staff on contract basis or daily wage basis may be over soon. There are thousands of existing contract and dailywage staff in various government departments in Goa who have been working for years in hopes of someday being regularised. No government wants to sack them and risk an election. At the same time, the current bjp government has 5 months to fulfull its poll promise of giving 10000 government jobs to the youth.

The solution, rebrand these temporary government jobs using words like "mitra" or "empaneled" jobs. On one hand, the government is recruiting service staff for various government schemes under the job title "Swayampurna Mitra", recruting training staff for National Disaster Management Authority under the job title "Aapada Mitra" and filling posts of PMMSY under the job title "Sagar Mitras". The jobs are purely on contractual bases with salaries of around Rs 10000, which is less than the monthly earnings of a skilled daily wage labour in Goa (wage rate Rs 423 x30 days = Ra 12690 per month). Even with incentives, the salary is peanuts for a State like goa where the living costs are high.

Yesterday, CM Dr Pramod Sawant announced that (instead of departments directly recruiting staff such as LDC, drivers etc), staff will be appointed by the Goa Human Resource Development Corporation and this " empaneled staff" will be sent to various government departments to work till the posts are filled with permanant staff. Started by the BJP (which ironically claims govt has no business to be in business), this corporation provides security and cleaning staff to other government departments.

This is a clever trick to fool young unemployed voters into thinking they will get government jobs. The youth, often from poor backgrounds, dont know that as part of GHRDC, they get paid only of they are assigned to other departments. Unlike in a private labour contract firm, these staff wont get paid if there is no vacancy at the client departments.

When permanent posts for these jobs are advertised, they'll go to those who pay bribes in lakhs and not to the poor mitras and empanelled staff.