No steps for traffic mgmt, decongestion in major towns
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Sept 23: Several important decisions taken by the PDP-BJP Coalition Government over a year back with the aim to make the administration responsive, give necessary impetus to the developmental activities and redress grievances of the people in a time bound manner have remained confined to the papers due to frequent violations of Transfer Policy and slackness on the part of bureaucrats.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that while chairing a meeting on June 15, 2016 convened to review the progress of various initiatives, programmes and schemes in the key sectors, the Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti took several important decisions, which include submission of annual report card by the Administrative Secretaries, Heads of the Departments and District Development Commissioners (DDCs) listing achievements, innovations and benefits to the public. The objective behind seeking report card was to ascertain the performance of the bureaucrats and make them responsive and accountable.
However, till date the process of submission of annual report card has not begun and the major obstacle in implementation of this decision is frequent transfer of Administrative Secretaries and other senior bureaucrats in blatant violation of Transfer Policy, sources said while pointing towards number of orders issued by the Government whereby Administrative Secretaries and HoDs were transferred from one post to another within few months.
It is pertinent to mention here that the State Cabinet vide Decision No.156/12/2010 dated July 27, 2010 approved policy on transfer/posting of officers and officials and the same was notified by the General Administration Department vide Order No.861 dated July 28, 2010 whereby broad principles were laid down for strict compliance by all the designated authorities while effecting transfers and postings orders.
As per the Transfer Policy, the minimum tenure of a Government employee on a post shall be two years and a maximum of three years. Similarly, the maximum tenure of posting in respect of important projects which are required to be completed in a time bound manner may be extended up to five years if continuation of an officer is considered necessary.
“The frequent transfers give a reason to the bureaucrats for non-submission of report card”, sources said, adding “how can they (bureaucrats) be asked to furnish annual report card when they are not given full tenure as mentioned in the Transfer Policy. Had the Transfer Policy been implemented in letter and spirit the Government would have been able to pull up the bureaucrats for non-adherence to the directive vis-à-vis furnishing of report card”.
“On the other side, there are numerous bureaucrats who despite occupying a particular post for the period specified in the Transfer Policy have neither come up with annual report card nor innovative measures for redressing the grievances of the common masses”, sources regretted.
In the meeting, the Chief Minister had also issued directions for assigning specific monthly targets to the Additional District Development Commissioners (ADDCs) for review, inspection and monitoring of projects in the concerned districts. Even DDCs were also asked to create dedicated Whatsapp Groups for receiving complaints and grievances of the people.
“Neither monthly targets are being assigned to the ADDCs in majority of the districts nor dedicated numbers created for receiving complaints by many District Development Commissioners”, sources said while disclosing that in some of the districts, the DDCs had created Whatsapp Groups for receiving complaints from the public but this practice was stopped following their transfers.
Pointing towards the decision regarding formulation of Traffic Management Plan for all the cities and towns, sources said, “the main focus of the Traffic Police is only on the twin capital cities and National Highways and no Traffic Management Plan has been prepared for those towns which over a period of time have become chaotic because of increase in vehicular population and encroachments”.
“Similarly, the focus vis-à-vis identification of land and creation of parking lots is only confined to twin capital cities and for major towns no strategy has been chalked out in this regard”, sources said, adding “there is also no follow-up action on the decision relating to relocation of vendors and public utilities to decongest towns”.
“There is also no taker of decision relating to formulation of plan for water conservation and water harvesting in each district of Jammu and Kashmir”, sources said while stressing that Government should immediately start exercise to identify the hurdles in the implementation of all the important decisions taken by it so far so as to achieve the objective behind the same.
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