Top posts in Animal Husbandry Dept lying vacant

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 21

Even as a large population in rural Punjab is dependent on dairy farming, the Department of Animal Husbandry that provides technical support to farmers seems to be nobody’s baby, with all top posts in the department lying vacant.

The posts lying unoccupied include one post of director, five sanctioned posts of joint directors, and 25 sanctioned posts of deputy directors. The reason attributed behind empty posts is the faulty service rules that were enacted long ago. According to the rules, the promotion of the officers was done on the basis of years of service put in by them. The outcome of the rules is that none of the 1,423 government veterinary doctors are eligible for the post of deputy director.

The predicament that the department is in can be gauged from the fact that at present, the department is being headed by an assistant director, a post which is second from the bottom in the hierarchy of the department. Besides, the assistant director is also going to retire next month.

Earlier, no veterinary doctor in the state was eligible to become a director, which is why a veterinary doctor from Haryana was brought in and deputed as the director. He had also left last month to join as the vice-chancellor of Guru Angad Dev Veterinary Sciences University.

It was in 2017 that the department last had a regular director. After the retirement of Dr HS Sandha, the post is being filled either by outsiders or by people on an adhoc basis.

Almost 35 per cent posts of government veterinary doctors and a large number of posts for pharmacists are lying vacant. At present, there are 1,424 sanctioned posts of veterinary officers, of them, 500 are vacant.

Last year, the government had announced to relax the service rules so that vacant posts could be filled, but nothing was done on the ground.

Dr Sarbjit Randhawa, president, Punjab State Veterinary Officers Association, said a few months ago, a meeting of the Departmental Promotion Committee was held to decide on promotions at various levels, but due to some reasons the meeting didn’t turn out to be fruitful.