UP Cong chief bats for ad hoc coaches, govt clears its stand
LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu on Thursday raised the issue of alleged non-payment of remuneration to ad hoc coaches.
The state Congress chief promised to fight till justice was done. “Yes, I asked the government in the assembly about the reason for non-payment of remuneration to the coaches,” he said.
UP sports minister Upendra Tewari, in his reply to Kumar’s query, cleared the government’s stand, stating that renewal of the coaches was not done as there were no coaching camps due to Covid.
“As per the labour department, arrangements have been made to avail the services of coaches through GeM portal and there is no provision of remuneration to the coaches without conducting training camps,” he said.
It is learnt that since February 2020, none of the ad hoc coaches were given any kind of remuneration, except a few in some districts, where local administration extended a helping hand with a “token amount”. Even after the lifting of the lockdown, nothing could be done even though the government came up with a policy to hire coaches through the “outsourcing”.
Although the UP Sports Directorate (a state government body) seems committed to appointing these ad hoc coaches via outsourcing as soon as possible, a “technical difficulty” has been delaying the process. Those in the know of things believe that if this “snag” is not sorted out soon, the process to appoint ad hoc coaches from April 1 this year would again be in jeopardy.
As for the rules for such recruitments through outsourcing, the Government e Marketplace
(GeM) portal clearly says that against one post, there should be three applicants and only then the system will pick one. So far, the two companies involved in the process are struggling to get an adequate number of applications even through the process has been “re-adopted” twice already.
As per the available records, 110 coaches have applied in 26 disciplines so far against the current vacancies of 341, whereas 41 applications have been received against 119 vacancies for five other disciplines.
“Unless we have 1,053 applications, we can’t supply 351 coaches as the system says,” said an insider connected with the agencies tasked with appointing the ad hoc coaches.
“In some disciplines, there are no adequate coaches and getting three-time applications of their strength is next to impossible,” said the insider who refused to be named. “There is no system of appointing people through the back door,” he added.
However, UP’s director (Sports) RP Singh, while accepting this “tricky” situation, promises to resolve the issue soon. “We have already extended the
dates of the application twice and for one more time, we are waiting for this. If nothing happens, we will go for the manual system, but only with the permission of the higher authorities,” he said.
“We are committed to the start of the coaching/training of the sportspersons through ad hoc coaches across the state and if the issue is sorted out before April 1, we can think of starting our camps early.”
These ad hoc coaches would no longer be known as “coaches” as the outsourcing companies have changed their designations to “instructors”.
“That’s not the issue with us, and the important thing is that we get our jobs back as we are in a hand-to-mouth situation. Many of us are selling tea, vegetables and running eatables shops in this crisis situation,” said a coach Vinod.
As per the norms, a sport instructor with international sporting background is entitled to get Rs 30,000 per month for the period from April 1 to February 28 in a year, followed by Rs 25,000 to those who possess NIS degree and Rs 20,000 to those, who have played up to the national level.