Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Feb 26: A Committee of the Jammu and Kashmir Forest Development Corporation (J&KFDC) has found timber worth crores of rupees missing from the sales depots of Pulwama district which has been illegally sold by the officials of these depots.
The J&KFDC South Kashmir formed a committee headed by Javid Ahmad Malik, Divisional Manager, Extraction Division, Anantnag for conducting enquiry as well as physical verification to look into the shortage of timber at sales depots of Pulwama, Panzgam and Litter in district Pulwama after it received complaints about shortage of timber.
The Committee, as per the inquiry report, submitted last week to Managing Director J&KFDC detected a huge shortage of 6100.88 cusec feet of timber including Fir, Kail and Deodar in these three sale depots.
The missing timber include 23.40 cusec feet of Deodar, 189.74 cusec feet of Kail and 5887.74 cusec feet of Fir.
The market value of the missing timber is worth several crore rupees and the Committee has termed it highly alarming and disgusting.
The Committee report said that the Divisional Manager has not cooperated with the enquiry committee and he didn’t produce necessary records before it during the inspection.
It said that earlier as well he had been cautioned by the General Manager South, Firdous Ahmad Mir, to improve the working culture of the Division, but “unfortunately no good results, especially during the on-spot inspection of the records of the Division on 28.06.2022”.
The Committee has raised questions over his role in monitoring the overall working of these depots where such wanton losses have taken place.
The committee has recommended that the cost of the shortage may be ordered to be recovered from involved staff as per prevailing auction and sale rates.
It has also recommended an exemplary punishment to those involved fraudulent officials to curb such tendency of misappropriating official position.
It has proposed constitution of a committee for the physical verification in other sales depots to avoid any complicacy.
An official said that the missing timber was sold by the officials of these sales depots illegally in the market at higher rates for monetary benefits. He said that such complaints of selling the timber in the market by the officials of these depots are frequent.
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