Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Aug 10: The directives issued by the state government to officials in the last two years to make administration "responsive" and "transparency" in governance are yet to be implemented.
For the last two years, the authorities announced several measures to make the administration responsive and transparency in the governance. The officials were directed to ensure their implementation.
However, sources said that officials have given poor response to the government's directives and have been confined to papers only.
One such direction was creation of WhatsApp groups by the district development commissioners of all districts of the state. "The DDCs were directed to create WhatsApp groups for receiving complaints and grievances. However, the DDCs did not adhere to the government directions neither created WhatsApp groups," an official posted at the Divisional Commissioner Kashmir office, said.
The official said that few DDCs have created the WhatsApp groups but could not continue due to their transfers.
"Few DDCs have blamed the frequent transfers (violation of transfer policy) of bureaucrats that they could not continue to receive complaints and grievances through WhatsApp," the official said.
A meeting was held on June 15, 2016 led by the then Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and directives were issued to officials for submission of annual and monthly progress report card of their departments by the administrative secretaries, heads of the departments, and district development commissioners (DDCs). It was aimed to review the performance of officials.
An official of the General Administration Department, said that departmental heads did not submit the annual report card to the government.
"Most of the departments have also failed to submit results framework document (RFD) for years," the official said.
The state government launched the RFD aimed to judge the performance of departments and to bring transparency in their functioning.
As per the guidelines, the administrative secretaries have to evaluate performance of their departments under RFD on the basis of timeline completion of targets, outcomes of the schemes, priorities fixed, quality of work done, and status of benefits of projects.
"Several officials have blamed the violation of transfer policy that they are not able to submit the annual and monthly performance report," the official said.
As per the transfer policy, the minimum tenure of a government employee on a post shall be two years and a maximum of three years.
The government has directed the departments to hold parallel enquiries against tainted officials, in addition to probe being held by anti-graft bodies. However, nothing such is being followed.
"Even if the departmental head is aware of any fraud, he is not acting on his own and remains dependent on anti-graft bodies for the probe," the official said.
Similarly, the departmental heads have been directed to put requisite information on the websites so that people should not visit the offices "unnecessary" instead get the information from the websites. "However, the departments have been ignoring these directives instead keeping websites defunct or not updated," the official said. |
