MUMBAI: Close on the heels of a financial package including some waivers approved recently by the Union Cabinet, Prasar Bharati today announced that the government had approved the filling up of 1150 posts in the programming and the technical wings of Doordarshan and All India Radio.
These posts are part of the 3452 essential category posts which were approved by the Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by the present Finance Minister P Chidamabaram in 2011. A majority of these posts belong to Group B & C, that is, Grade Pay of less than Rs. 4,600. While the Group B & C would be filled up by Staff Selection Commission, the remaining would be filled up by the Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board. The recruitment process is expected to be over by middle of next year.
In a statement, Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar said: “This is the first major infusion of new blood into Doordarshan and All India Radio after a period of 15 long years. After approval of the Cabinet for the financial restructuring, which involved a waiver of Rs. 120.71 billion, this is the second biggest decision. It would go a long way in creating quality content for our viewers and help us in facing the emerging competition. Prasar Bharati is eternally grateful to Information & Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni for piloting it through GoM,”
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The 1150 posts include Assistant Station Directors, Assistant Director (Programme), Engineering Assistants, Programme Executives, Transmission Executives, Technicians, Camerapersons, Production Assistants and Administrative Staff.
Member (Personnel) Brig. (Retd) V A M Hussain added: “These were critical and essential posts, which had lapsed and needed to be revived. A number of our stations were without engineers and programming staff, which had affected their operations. It is a new dawn on the horizon of Prasar Bharati and will help the Corporation to tide over its acute manpower shortage”.
After the revival of the Prasar Bharati Board under the current CEO, it has been working on a number of plans to revive the public broadcaster through aggressive focus on shoring up revenues through marketing, organizational restructuring and manpower planning.
The public broadcaster plans to have six senior officers with domain expertise to look after various verticals including Marketing, DTH, Technology, Infrastructure, Archives and Security. The Corporation has also engaged an HR Advisor of retired Secretary level to expedite promotions of staff persons, who had stagnated at the same posts for as long as 20 years and had little motivation to give their best.
In other organizational reforms, the Doordarshan and AIR zones are being combined into a total of seven zones viz. North Zone, North Central Zone, Central Zone, East Zone, West Zone, South Zone and North-East Zone. At present there are 12 Zones in All India Radio and 6 Zones in Doordarshan and 5 Zones in Engineering Wing combined for AIR/DD.
In the restructured model, each Zone will have three ADGs with one each for Engineering Projects, Engineering Maintenance and Programmes & Administration. The reorganization, which makes DD and AIR coterminous for the first time in the history, is aimed at decentralization and improvement in organizational efficiency.
