New Delhi: The Centre
has decided to replace the ‘class’ categorisation for specifying the seniority
of its employees with new alphabetical groupings.
The posts under central government will be denoted as groups A,
B, C and D instead of as classes I, II, III and IV in the service rules, the
Department of Personnel and Training said in an order issued to all ministries
and offices.
The Class-I
classification is for gazetted officers while Class-II refers to mainly the
non-gazetted officers, though there are some gazetted officers in this category
too.
Class-III comprises
clerical staff and Class-IV includes peons and helps or multi-tasking staff in
the government hierarchy.
Class-III (Group C)
employees have often expressed concern that they are taunted as ‘third-class’ employees
due to the categorisation, official sources said.
DoPT, in its order
issued on Monday, cited its 30-year-old order to say that the old nomenclature
of Class-I, II, III and IV may be read as Group A, B, C and D in the service
rules.
“The rules already
existed for group categorisation. The DoPT has asked all ministries to reflect
it properly and not to use old nomenclature of classes,” a senior DoPT official
said.
There are about 30.84 lakh central government employees,
according to DoPT data..
PTI
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