More than 9,300 posts in the Military Engineer Services (MES) are set to be abolished, after defence minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday approved a proposal made by the army’s Engineer-in-Chief, the defence ministry said in a statement. The MES is a construction and maintenance agency of the armed forces and has annual budget of around Rs 13,000 crore.
The abolition of the posts is one of the direct outcomes of the recommendations made by the Lt Gen DB Shekatkar committee report on enhancing the army’s combat potential and trimming its revenue expenditure.
“One of the recommendations made by the committee was to restructure the civilian workforce in a manner that the work of MES could be partly done by departmentally employed staff and other works could be outsourced,” said the ministry statement on the abolition of 9,304 posts out of the total 13,157 vacancies of the basic and industrial staff of the MES.
The ministry said the recommendation to cut the posts was aimed at making the MES an effective organisation, with leaner workforce and well equipped to handle complex issues in an efficient and cost effective manner.
Welcoming the move to abolish the posts, Shekatkar said this was an important step towards the progressive reduction of the workforce in the coming years.
“The MES is a World War II concept. It’s a drain on our resources. It’s very important to spend our resources judiciously. There will be no increase in the defence budget for the next two to three years because of the situation created by Covid-19. We have to use our money wisely as our adversaries will not wait for us to build capabilities,” Shekatkar told Hindustan Times.
The MES is responsible for the design, construction and maintenance of all army, navy and air force infrastructure but experts believe outsourcing these works is a better and cheaper option.
The Shekatkar panel made 188 suggestions of which 99 have been accepted by the ministry and others are under consideration.
The recommendations relate to several organisations including the MES, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Directorate General of Quality Assurance, Directorate General of Defence Estates, the Ordnance Factory Board and defence accounts.
