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Powerless babus lament: Can’t buy chai-samosa Chandigarh, January 5 Taking a serious view of the situation, the Deputy Chief Minister ordered Chief Secretary SC Aggarwal to take immediate remedial steps to empower DCs so that “they have no excuse for poor-performance”. Initially, it was the Deputy Chief Minister who took on the DCs for not supporting the government on its governance-reform agenda, but soon the DCs expressed their helplessness in the absence of “punitive powers”. For instance, the government has directed that every deputy commissioner should conduct at least 100 raids in his districts to ensure proper functioning of various departments. To this, some DCs said they had no power to take any punitive action against those flouting the rules. “We send a note to the department concerned to take action against the erring employees, but the departments almost never take any action in such cases, making the entire exercise futile.” One of the DCs said during a raid, a woman doctor was found absent from duty. On asking about here whereabouts, her colleagues said she was on VIP duty. The DC wondered what kinds of emergency VIP duty a gynaecologist would perform for a visiting dignitary. Again, the babus were very upset over the fact that the Punjab and Haryana High Court had almost frozen the Red Cross funds in the districts and there was no way now to foot the hospitality bills. “If we don’t offer tea to a VIP, he gets annoyed, but at the same time we have no legitimate ways to pay for the “chai” and “samosa”. Most of the times, some official ends up paying from his or her own pocket.” Sukhbir immediately asked the Chief Secretary to release Rs 10 lakh to each district to take care of such expenses. The districts would also get an additional emergency fund.Smart government officials with dual charges often get away by saying that they were on duty at the other place. The DCs said they had no way to verify such things. Now the Chief Secretary has been asked to ensure that duty rosters are prepared for all employees with dual charge with specific mention of the time these officials would spend at each place. Taking complaints by the DCs seriously, Sukhbir has also directed that all Senior Superintendents of Police (SSP) must attend the monthly law and order meetings convened by the DCs. He has passed instructions that the SSPs must do away with the practice of asking junior police officials to represent the district police chief. The Deputy Chief Minister also came down heavily on DCs for not implementing the recommendations of the Governance Reforms Commission. He told the DCs that his feedback was that despite government’s decision to replace affidavits with self-attestation; only 20 per cent departments had implemented the same. He has now asked the Chief Secretary to advertise in the media regarding compulsory affidavits and waiver of attestation by gazetted officers to educate the public. To make DCs more accountable, he asked the Chief Secretary to work out an appraisal proforma in association with the MGSIPA within 15 days so that performance of DCs could be graded for the calendar year 2010. WHAT DCs SAY l
We send a note to the department concerned to take action against the erring employees, but the departments almost never take any action in such cases, making the entire exercise futile.
l If we don’t offer tea to a VIP, he gets annoyed, but at the same time we have no legitimate ways to pay for the “chai” and “samosa”. Most of the times, some official ends up paying for all this from his or her own pocket
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