Chandigarh: Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema on Thursday, October 29, directed all state government departments to immediately complete the formalities and forward eligible cases to the Personnel Department so that outsourced employees can be moved to direct contractual engagement with the government in a time-bound manner, under the Punjab State Outsourced Personnel (Transition to Contractual Engagement) Act 2026, Bright Punjab Express reported.

Cheema, who heads the Cabinet Sub-Committee tasked with resolving employees' grievances, gave the direction while chairing a round of meetings with ten employee unions and united fronts in Chandigarh. "The directions aim to ensure seamless implementation under the Punjab State Outsourced Personnel (Transition to Contractual Engagement) Act 2026," he said, as reported, underscoring that administrative bottlenecks must not delay the legal transition of eligible workers into direct contractual roles. The Enlistment Outsourcing Coordination Committee was among the delegations that presented their case.

In the same round, Cheema reviewed the Transport Department employees' standing demands and directed officials to accelerate their settlement, and told the CPF Karamchari Union that, as reported, "the state administration is actively working toward a favorable and prompt resolution of their issues." Four Education Department unions were also heard, with the minister assuring them that the majority of their core demands are already in the pipeline for administrative approval, as reported. To the Gram Panchayat Jal Supply Pump Operators Association, which raised minimum daily wages, he instructed the department concerned to draft and submit a formal proposal without delay.

A concrete recruitment item also emerged: addressing a deputation of the National Federation of the Blind, Cheema said the official recruitment process to fill 28 vacant Group D posts reserved for visually impaired candidates is already underway, and guaranteed that backlog vacancies across other groups would be cleared concurrently during upcoming recruitment drives for the respective posts, as reported.

The background framework is independently documented: the Act, passed by the Vidhan Sabha in August 2026, is expected to cover about 26,000 to 28,000 Group C and Group D outsourced workers in its first phase, moving them from private manpower agencies to direct, year-on-year contractual engagement with the government. Eligibility generally requires five years of continuous service, reduced to three years for high-risk categories such as high-voltage power complaint handling, sanitation and sewer maintenance, and firefighting, with verification through attendance records, bank salary statements and police clearance. Thursday's direction is therefore an implementation order on a law already passed — its value will be measured not by the assurance but by how many eligible cases departments actually forward and how many engagement letters follow, neither of which has been reported yet. The account of the meetings above is the government's own, carried in the official release; union reactions beyond presenting their demands were not reported in the source.