A total of 8469 vacancies exist in All India Radio, which has total staff strength of 17,853 against the sanctioned strength of 26,322.
The most critically affected areas are the Programme Wing and the News Services Division with 3383 and 85 vacancies respectively. The existing strength in the Programme Wing is just 3532 out of the total sanctioned strength of 6915, while NSD/News has strength of 147 as against the sanctioned strength of 232.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information & Technology has asserted that it has ‘consistently been exhorting’ the Information & Broadcasting Ministry to fill up the critical vacancies in DD and AIR and it again exhorted the Department to settle the issues with various Ministries and set up the recruitment board.
The Committee stated that during the course of study visits to various parts of the country, it was told about the difficulties encountered by various regional stations due to staff shortages, however, the situation had not been addressed earnestly. A report on the Demand for Grants for 2012-13 said that the Ministry/Prasar Bharati had not been able to keep their promises made before the Committee to handle the situation.
The Committee also regretted that Prasar Bharati had failed to live up to the assurance given by then Prasar Bharati CEO that the Recruitment Boards for Prasar Bharati would be set up by 31 March 2011. “Now, when full one year has elapsed since then, the issues have still not been settled resulting in further delay in filling up these vacancies,” the Committee noted.
The Committee had been informed that the notification with regard to setting up of Recruitment Board is under inter-Ministerial consultation and was given to understand that there are still some issues to be resolved between the Ministry/Department of Expenditure and the Department of Personnel.
Furthermore, UPSC and SSC both are said to have refused to select for a non-Governmental organization, thus creating a new problem for the Ministry/Prasar Bharati.
The Committee said that while deploring the situation on finalization of recruitment rules and setting up of Recruitment Board leading from worse to worst scenario, it ‘fails to understand how DD and AIR can work effectively without filling the critical vacancies.’ It wanted its concerns to be adequately conveyed to the respective Ministries.
Meanwhile, the Ministry is also required to finalize the strategy to fill vacancies on a fast track basis so that the recruitment process commences immediately when the Recruitment Board and Recruitment Rules are in place, which will enable Prasar Bharati to fill up the vacancies within the shortest possible timeframe.
The Proposal for setting up a Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board was approved by Prasar Bharati Board on 21 July 2010 and discussed in the Ministry and a final proposal was referred to the Department of Personnel and Training(DOP&T) on 15 February 2011. DOP&T concurred with the proposal in June 2011 and comments of the Department of Expenditure (DOE) were also received on 28 September last year. The DoE had requested that a separate proposal be formulated for creation of posts for the secretariat of Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board and also requested for drafting of agreement containing terms and conditions of the members of the Board.
This had been done and the proposal was sent to DoE in February 2012, which would then be sent to Law Ministry.
In its report in August last year, the Committee had urged Prasar Bharati to send a proposal for filling up 3452 essential categories of posts to the DoE, based on the report of the National Productivity Council giving full justification for such recruitment. The Ministry is now in the process of seeking cabinet approval, for which a cabinet note has already been circulated for inter-Ministerial consultation. After obtaining the cabinet approval, Prasar Bharati shall undertake the process of filling up the essential category of posts.
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