Home guards can retire at 60
Ananya Panda
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, October 9
The Cabinet today decided to amend the Delhi Home Guards (Amendment) Rules, 2008 raising the disengagement age of home guards to 60 years from the present 50 years and hire 6,000 new home guards in the capital. The proposal for the latter will soon be put for cabinet’s nod.
Chaired by CM Arvind Kejriwal, the cabinet allowed the personnel recruited as home guards to have a choice whether or not to quit the voluntary workforce at 50 as mandated from 2008. Notably, police constables engaged in far more arduous duties retire at 60.
The move, as per the government, will address the severe crunch in manpower with presently 4,390 home guards on rolls against the sanctioned 10,285.
“Post 2008, when the discharge age was reduced from 60 to 50, saw many personnel opting out before completion of their tenure from the service,” said an official.
The home guards hired as a support volunteers to the police, other departments including education, DTC, health among others are responsible for helping in internal security and disaster situations, protection of persons, security of property and public safety as are assigned to them from time to time.
The cabinet also approved a proposal to mandate at least 80 per cent compulsory retention of contractual staff by any new contractor; i.e., henceforth, contractual labourers cannot be totally disengaged on change of contractor on fresh cycle of contract and the new contractor would be bound to absorb 80 per cent of the existing contractual manpower. With this, the practice of demanding money in lieu of letting the previously hired contract staff continue on which several complaints have come to the notice of the government would also come to an end, as per the AAP government.
The cabinet also extended the use of passes in AC and cluster buses at Rs 100 per month for students of all educational institutions run by the Centre, city government and city’s municipal corporations, local bodies or by the government-aided societies.
