Early Times Report
Jammu, July 25: Former Executive Engineer Public Health Engineering Department Kathua, SK Puri, who is now Superintending Engineer Hydrolic Circle Jammu while clarifying on the news report, “In 2-yrs, XEn paid Rs 7.57 lakh as rent for a private vehicle, reveals RTI”, said that hiring private vehicles by the departments is in vogue in most of the departments including PHE, PWD, Irrigation and Flood Control beside others. The hiring of a private vehicle proved to be profitable for the department and during my tenure as EXEN Kathua, we had hired the vehicle at the rate of Rs. 30,000 per month, which includes petrol, salary to the driver, while the repair and maintenance cost had also been borne by the owner.
“The case related to around three years back and during that time the approved rates of State Motor Garages as well as other government departments to hire the private vehicles were much higher in comparison to the Scorpio vehicle hired by PHE Kathua”, Puri said. Moreover in the case of hiring another vehicle, Puri said it was a load carrier, which had been hired by the department for the last over 18 years and it was used by the department to shift all machinery including motors, transformers from the higher reaches to various areas. |
