Governments and in particular elected public representatives should in the normal course prefer their required attention towards ensuring that our rich legacy , antiquities and historical symbols were protected and preserved. Such monuments are living modes of describing our past history and glory as also how great was our art, culture , architecture, sculpture and other areas of activities . There are several places, symbols, forts , archival records and other monuments which are looked after by the Department of Archives, Archaeology and Museums . As a natural corollary, therefore, this Department needs to be accorded its due importance and provided with the requisite and reasonable infrastructure in order to be in a position to preserve our rich cultural and historical heritage. There may be several exercises having been undertaken in respect of making this department sufficiently well equipped to fulfil the noble objective behind the very purpose of creation of this department. However, those are appearing to be just on papers and recorded in files. Instead, this Department is reeling under staff shortage and even replacements against those posts which on account of the incumbent employees having attained superannuation, have not been filled. Top posts of Deputy Directors and Assistant Directors, two in each category, too have been halved on account of the same being transferred to the UT of Ladakh. As if such a poor management of the concerned department was any less in magnitude wholly due to lack of interest of the successive Governments in Jammu and Kashmir in the matter, its several posts having been transferred to the UT of Ladakh has further worsened the position of its staff strength . How can, therefore, the expected role be played by the Department in preserving our rich legacy and cultural heritage ? Why is that scenario not stirring the administrative acumen of the concerned authorities ? There should have been , in fact, such an arrangement in place so as not to see the equilibrium getting disturbed in the said department to an extent of adversely impacting its performance. The Curator of Dogra Art Museum too stands transferred to Ladakh even though the officer has no assignment of the sort as there being no Museum in the UT of Ladakh. There are several other posts which have been sliced out of the total strength and transferred to Ladakh thus further depleting the manpower strength of the Department , the working of which perhaps is thought to be not that important to really be cared for proper planning of the strength of manpower required by it to enable it work smoothly. It could be the other way round too that since generally speaking, there were no hard and fast rules in respect of assessing performance with accountability on yearly basis of departments , and accordingly reckoning their peculiar needs and requirements of the number of staff members so that working could not suffer, it is presumed to be immaterial about how many staff members to be posted against the sanctioned strength in each department of the government . Such a policy needs to be reviewed and reversed too. We have been voicing our concern about such a scenario being prevalent in most of other departments as well, some of whom have specifically been pointed out with full details with intent to expecting the UT Government to address the problem but it is a matter of great disappointment that absence of remedial measures were not only undermining the performance of the affected department but because of promotion avenues being virtually inelastic , job satisfaction is resultantly usually missing in the aspiring and eligible employees for such promotions which is paramount otherwise in any type of organisation to be run effectively. A disappointed employee is a silent non performer , a near wastage of potential human resource and cumulatively it has a multiplier effect. Can we afford that indefinitely?
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