Akshay Azad
Early Times Report
Jammu, Apr 9: On the hind side of tall claims of assigning high priority to the horticulture sector in the state, the government has posted 4 non- technical Directors to head the department, blatantly demolishing its working, even as eligible people with technical background and experience were available.
Sources in the department pleading anonymity informed that Horticulture sector contributed to nearly 7-8 percent in state's GDP and has given employment to over 7 Lakh people, but this sector was given raw deal by government.
"In the last one year, government has posted four non-technical directors including Abdul Hakim, Mathura Masoom, Mohammad Hussain Mir and Manzooor Ahmed Qureshi all were from administrative services cadre", sources said.
"Government posts the non-technical officials as head of department for few months and when they start understanding the intricacies of the department, they are transferred and a new non-technical official is placed", sources said, adding that most of these non-technical officials were unwilling to serve in the department.
Sources further said that even though Chief Secretary as well as Minister were ready to post a technical official to the prestigious post of Director but so far they were unwilling to do the same. "Due to failure of government to post non-technical directors in last one year the production of quality plants has declined to almost zero", an official said, adding that even the dream project of government regarding High Density Plantation of fruit plants in Kashmir valley would likely to prove disastrous due to violation of procedure in the plantation process.
"Under the scheme, improved quality fruit plants were to be imported. The Quarantine Act is under observation for the last over one and half year. Without keeping the plants under observation the government has distributed sapling of new variety plants without following the due procedure.
Earlier Himachal Pardesh and Uttrakhand had also started plantation without following due procedure due to which, they had to destroy all the plants after they were infected by a disease", an official said, adding that in Jammu and Kashmir also, due procedure was not followed and the dream project would ultimately prove a failure.
A retired official of department said that government must appoint technical officer on the post of director so that department could be reinvigorated. |
