New Delhi (NVI): Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today approved abolition of 9,304 posts in Military Engineering Services (MES), to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the Armed Forces.
“Raksha Mantri Shri Rajnath Singh has approved the proposal of Engineer-in-Chief of Military Engineering Services (MES) for optimisation of more than 9,300 posts in the basic and industrial workforce,” MoD said.
The Defence Minister’s approval is in line with the recommendations of the Committee of Experts, headed by Lt General Shekatkar, it said.
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.
“In line with the recommendations made by the Committee, based on the proposal of E-in-C, MES, the proposal of abolition of 9,304 posts in MES out of the total 13,157 vacancies of the Basic and Industrial staff has been approved by Raksha Mantri,” read an official MoD statement.
The recommendation was aimed at making MES an effective organisation with a leaner workforce, well equipped to handle complex issues in the emerging scenario in an efficient and cost effective manner, the Ministry said.
Military Engineering Service, popularly know in defence services as MES is the premier construction agency and one of the pillars of Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army which provides rear line engineering support to the Armed Forces. It is responsible for creating the strategic and the operational infrastructure other than major roads, as also the administrative habitat for all three Services and the associated organisations of the Ministry of Defence.
It has Pan India footprint to provide engineering support to various formations of Army, Air Force, Navy and DRDO. For this, the MES has over six hundred stations spread across the main land and the island territories of India. MES is a military organisation but has both Army and Civilian component of officers and other subordinate staff.
