*Officers adopting dilly-dallying approach in furnishing reply
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Apr 29: The Accountant General (Audit) has detected shortage of Rs 2.44 crore worth items in the store of the Estates Department. However, no action has been taken against the erring officials during the past more than two years despite the matter having been brought to the notice of the senior officers of the Department.
As per the rules, physical verification of store items need to be conducted at the end of each financial year to ascertain excess or shortage of articles, if any. However, records showed that the physical verification of store items had never been conducted by the department, Senior Audit Officer in the office of the Accountant General (Audit) said.
“As a result of this, the actual ground balance of store items had never been reconciled with the book balance of store items”, he said in a communiqué No.GS/J-6/2014-15/Review/ HM/35 addressed to the Deputy Director Estates Jammu.
It was seen during the audit of the handing and taking over of the store records in the month of December 2012 that the store items as reflected in the books of the stores were not found on ground as the newly posted Store Officer had verified the store items actually lying on ground.
As a result, the balances of store items found short were not carried forward in the stock registers maintained after the handing and taking over of the store records. “The Estates Department had not taken action to ascertain actual shortage of stores by conducting physical verification of stores even after a lapse of more than two years of detection of shortage of stores”, the Senior Audit Officer said.
“This is notwithstanding the fact that the store officer had taken up the matter with the Deputy Director Estates in the month of October 2013 and thereafter in the month of March 2014”, he said in the communiqué, adding “the detailed check of major items of stores revealed that there was a huge shortage of stores in respect of 40 items and was around to the value of Rs 2.44 crore”. This value was worked out by audit on the basis of rates of 2010-11.
“Lack of internal control system such as annual physical verification of stores had created loopholes in the effective management of stores and consequently led to suspected misappropriation of store items of Rs 2.44 crore”, the audit said while mentioning that stock registers had never been authenticated under the signature of either Deputy Director Estates Jammu or Assistant Accounts Officer.
It was seen in the audit that the action in the matter had not been taken up as of December 2014 despite the fact that matter had been taken up by the store officer with the Deputy Director Estates Jammu. Moreover, it came to the fore during audit that actual value of material found short had also not been worked out by the department.
Through the communiqué the office of the Accountant General (Audit) had sought justification behind non-taking of any action on the matter despite lapse of more than two years and actual value of store items found short.
Following this communiqué from the office of the Accountant General (Audit), the Deputy Director Estates on January 29, 2015 wrote to the concerned officers to sort out the actual position before the matter is referred to the higher authorities for necessary action under rules.
The concerned officers were directed to furnish the report within four days failing which action as warranted under rules will be initiated against the erring officials. But the erring officials even handled the communiqué of Deputy Director non-seriously which prompted the latter to once again write to these officers on February 6, 2015 with the direction to furnish information within two days positively.
When contacted, Deputy Director Estates, Vinod Kumar said, “Director Estates has constituted a verification committee headed by an Executive Engineer and further action would be taken on the basis of report of this committee”.
He, however, failed to specify any time-frame for completion of task by the verification committee and said, “this will take time”, adding “sometimes the observations of the audit are also found incorrect”.
This indicates that dilly-dallying approach is still being adopted in dealing with the issue of shortage of Rs 2.44 crore worth store items, sources remarked.
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