Lalduhoma sought information on substitute employees and asked them to report themselves by January.
Credit: PTI Photo
Aizawl: At least 3,365 state government employees in Mizoram have hired substitutes who illegally work in their place in various departments, especially in rural areas, officials said.
Soon after assuming power in December last year, the Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) government headed by Chief Minister Lalduhoma sought information on substitute employees and asked them to report themselves by January.
According to information received so far about the discrepancies, the school education department has the highest number of substitute employees at 1,115, followed by the health and family welfare department at 624 and the power and electricity department with 253 proxies, the officials said.
Of those who had hired substitute employees, 2,070 government employees reported that they had to do it because of health reasons, while 703 cited domestic problems.
Other reasons cited by the employees for hiring proxies were absence of residential quarters, inaccessibility of the villages where they were posted and language problems, among others.
Lalduhoma had recently said that the state cabinet will consider the cases of substitutes being hired by government employees and take a final decision.
Mizoram has around 50,000 state government employees.