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| Missing in action during floods, Police, SMC, Emergency Services Deptt claim huge bills | | | Bashir Assad
Srinagar, Sept 20 : For about three weeks now, as floods wreaked havoc in Srinagar and the rest of Kashmir, the victims and the rescue agencies noted with shock that J&K Police, Fire and Emergency Services wing and Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) were nowhere to be seen.
Here comes the bigger shocker. The three have raised bills claiming fuel charges for ferrying goods and other essentials for the flood victims. Their collective bill amounts to Rs 2.5 crore.
Highly placed sources in the state administration admit that they are completely confounded by this bill raised by the three departments. “From all accounts that we have received, J&K Police, Fire and Emergency Services Department and SMC were entirely missing from the rescue operations. We have not been able to understand how these departments are now claiming reimbursement of such huge bills for the so-called expenses incurred by them,” said a senior officer.
The shocker does not end here.
The department officials say they had received Rs 10 crore in cash from the central government for flood relief measures. The amount was sent in cash through a flight because all banking services in Srinagar were down. Hence, there was no way the grant could have been withdrawn from any account. “All these three departments have claimed that they pressed into service private tippers for the rescue and relief operations. J&K Police alone has taken Rs 50 lakh from the cash grant as expenses for the tippers,” revealed the officer. It is learnt that the Fire and Emergency Services Department and the Srinagar Municipal Corporation have also taken from the cash grant, demanding that this was reimbursement for their immediate expenses.
“If we believe their claim of carrying relief to flood victims through tippers hired by them, this will mean that a single sack of rice which costs Rs 1,000 came to cost us a whopping Rs 10,000 because of their collective efforts,” said an officer.
The few officers in the state administration who are genuinely pained by the colossal loss caused to the state by the floods admit the bitter truth. They say that in the coming months and years, the grants which will be given by the Centre and also by the state for relief and rehabilitation in Jammu and Kashmir may go into the pockets of officials.
“In the name of floods, we will see important files go missing, false claims made for huge expenditures on infrastructure development involving equipment, building, roads etc, and other malpractices. The actual damage will be hugely exaggerated to extract money from both the Centre and the state,” said a senior officer.
“We all know that the state needs massive rehabilitation, and crores will go into financing the effort.
But how much of it will benefit the state and how much will be siphoned away is anybody’s guess,” he added. |
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