Thaindian News

Panaji, June 28 (IANS) The Goa Church Thursday asked the BJP government to show “humane consideration” and employ the 200-odd field supervisors in the mining and geology department whose pre-election recruitment has caused a row.

Maverick Fernandes, executive secretary of the Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP), told Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar that denial of jobs to the candidates appointed by the erstwhile Digambar Kamat’s Congress-led coalition government on the eve of the March assembly polls amounted to human rights’ violation.

“Several of the recruits after receiving the ‘Offer of Appointment’ have quit their secure jobs to report for duty. Many have families dependent on their income. This becomes a human rights issue as it amounts to denial of a sustainable livelihood for no fault of theirs,” said Fernandes, whose CSJP is the social arm of the influential Roman Catholic Church in Goa.

Hounded by increasingly shrill allegations of sheltering illegal mining and deliberately weakening the mining and geology department, Kamat had hurriedly announced the recruitment of 230 field supervisors for the mining department in February, barely one month before the March polls.

The recruitment as well as the offer letters were handed over to 200 selected candidates in a flurry just before the elections even as the then opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, cried hoarse alleging a ‘jobs-for-votes’ scam.

Once elected to power, the new government initiated a vigilance probe into the jobs doled out by the government in the pre-election rush, not just by the mines department by other departments as well.

Official sources say the vigilance probe was in the last stage of completion.

Maverick in his letter said the recruited candidates satisfied the necessary requirements and that proper hiring processes were followed by the previous government.

Fernandes’ sentiment is echoed by the Congress, whose spokesperson and legislator from Curtorim, Reginaldo Lourenco, said that the BJP government was creating hurdles for genuinely recruited candidates.