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| Govt smashes its own austerity initiatives | | Purchases vehicles worth Rs 186. 87 crore in 3 years | | KUNAL SHRIVATSA
JAMMU, Feb 23: In a brazen defiance of Government's austerity initiatives, as many as 34 state government departments have exhausted more than Rs 186 crore on purchase of new vehicles during the last three years.
The startling revelations came to fore in the Lower House of the State Legislature during Question Hour when Minister for Finance Abdul Rahim Rather was replying to the supplementaries on a question of Sofi Abdul Gaffar regarding State's fiscal deficit.
Information provided in the reply divulged that an amount of Rs 6830.661 lakh was expended by the government for buying new vehicles in 2012-13, the funds utilized to procure means of transportation for the period 2011-12 was Rs 5941.910 lakh while the amount spent for purchasing fresh vehicles during 2010-11 was Rs 5915.047 lakh, aggregating a whopping Rs 186. 87crore in 3 years.
The figures are self explanatory as it reflects that government's claims on austerity measures are mere rhetoric and such steps are meant only for the general public.
The government's contradictory stand over the issue of austerity gets exposed in the same reply.
While giving the details of the austerity advisories issued and the steps taken for their implementation during the period, the government reply mentioned that apart from imposing short term austerity measures to contain the increasing deficit, certain long term measures like new Recruitment Policy and new Pension Policy were taken during the last three years.
While on one hand the government kept on spending huge amount of money on purchase of new vehicles during the last three years, it has put monetary restrictions on its own people by offering reduced salaries to newly recruited employees under its new Recruitment Policy in order to cut on its salary expenditure viz a viz implementing its new Pension Scheme so that it could cut on its pension expenditure.
CPI (M) MLA M Y Tarigami while commenting on the austerity initiatives said that by bringing in New Recruitment Policy as an austerity measure to cut down government spending, the government had changed the course of lives of the youth of this state and the bureaucrats and ministers were purchasing expensive vehicles for themselves.
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