* Delayed RTI reply demands Rs 20K for info
Sanjeev K Sharma
JAMMU, Oct 27: Believe it or not, for the last 13 years there is acute staff shortage at Academy of Art, Culture and Languages (JKAACL) in J&K with 26 vacant posts for Gazetted Officers and the Government run cultural body is having a total shortage of 116 staffers which also include 72 non-Gazetted and 18 Class-IV employees and this shortage of employees has directly resulted in overburdening of the existing staff which is presently overworking to keep the show running.
As per the documentary evidence available with the Excelsior, the vacant positions were the result of retirements of officers and officials since the year 2009 and the situation had not changed till May 1, 2022 while highly reliable sources at the Academy informed that even as of now things are in same state of affairs as neither any new recruitment took place in these 13 long years against the available vacancies, nor any existing officer or official has been promoted in this regard and even no Departmental Promotional Committee (DPC) constituted during this period for promotions but some officials had even retired awaiting DPC for their promotions.
The vacant Gazetted positions at the Academy include one each of Additional Secretary and Deputy Secretary, three Chief Editors (Dogri-Hindi Dictionary, Encyclopedia Kashmiriyana and Urdu), one post of Special Officer for Cultural Activities G-1, two of Editor-Hindi and Coordination (Kashmiri), nine of Cultural Officers, four posts of Assistant Editors (English, Gojri, Punjabi and Pahari), one of Exhibition Officer, one of Publication Officer, one of Administrative Officer, one post of Private Secretary and one of Publicity cum Public Relation Officer.
Insiders informed that the shortage of staff at the Academy at present has forced the authorities to give more than one charge to the serving officers and there were no promotions for the last 12-13 years though charge allowances are being given to the officers having additional charges and more than half of the staff has been retired during these 13 years.
Sources informed that many irked employees have moved courts in this regard as no DPC has been conducted for years together.
When contacted, Secretary JKAACL, Bharat Singh skipped the question on shortage of employees.
“I will like to have one-to-one talk on this,” he said.
However, on DPC the Secretary informed that he has sent a proposal for approval of DPC to the office of LG as he is president of the Academy.
Meanwhile, in another surprising development the Academy has demanded hefty amount of Rs. 20,000 from an RTI applicant for providing information regarding payments made for Spring Theatre Festival organized by the JKAACL this year, details of choreographer and programmes choreographed since 2015 and payments made by the Academy during the last and present financial years.
On September 6, 2022 an RTI query was made by Theatre Artist, Mohd. Yasin and the Public Information Officer (PIO) at JKAACL, Shahnawaz had replied to the same on October 18, 2022 citing heavy information and costs of stationary, Photostat and labour charges as the reason for demanding the big amount.
“If reply to RTI query comes after a period of one month then the concerned department is not supposed to charge any money from the applicant and they have to inform the applicant before the deadline if they are going to charge any additional fee,” RTI activist, S. Balvinder Singh said quoting the RTI Act.
When contacted, the PIO at JKAACL Shahnawaz skipped the reason for demanding money even after crossing the deadline of reply to the RTI query and said that the applicant had demanded bulk information which was to be collected from Academy offices across J&K and it took a lot of time.
Surprisingly the PIO, in his reply, had also not mentioned the account number on which the money was to be deposited which further raises doubts about transparency and accountability.
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