14 divisions left without circle heads
KD NEWS SERVICE
SRINAGAR, May 11: The government may have constituted fact finding teams to weed -out graft practices from the system at grass root level, but has probably forgotton to look right down under its nose in the Civil secretariat where the top Babus break every law they are otherwise mandated and required to uphold.
They have been running the roost and doing things according to their own will and the time of their choosing and hardly believe in remaining accountable to any but expect everyone under them to be so without any fail. And in the process they end up in failing the pro-people initiatives of the government themselves. The live example of such official apathy and carelessness is the PHE & I&FC divisions of entire North Kashmir which have been left without Superintending Engineers resulting in the halt of many important developmental projects in the region. Besides the projects, the employees are the worst sufferers whose G.P Fund cases, salaries, and other routine works have been badly hit due to the Non- availability of the Superintending engineers at Hydraulic circles of Sopore and Kupwara .
Fourteen divisions of I&FC and PHE in the three districts of North Kashmir including Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora are running without Superintending Engineers from almost more than fifteen days and what makes it more surprising is that the Secretary PHE at Civil secretariat has forgot to even assign the additional charge to anyone . The ironic thing –RNA has learnt from Sources- is that that an Assistant engineer deployed in the Hydraulic Circle Sopore as Technical Officer is functioning as SE without any orders making ‘ mockery’ of the system. The said AE is actually posted in Irrigation and Flood control division Baramulla and was deployed in Circle as T.O last year. Sources said he is doing the routine work of SE and even holding meetings without having any such mandate.
Pertinently an order was issued by the Chief Engineer in March vide Number 16981-17016 dated 20-03-2019 asking all Superintendents to withdraw ‘any orders/ arrangement’ if issued, without the approval of his directorate. The AE despite the clear cut directions continues to enjoy the powers of ‘defacto ‘SE with nobody in the department even taking a note of it. Many Executive Engineers of both PHE and I&FC in North Kashmir said that the absence of superintending engineers has stalled many important Project reports, DPRs besides throwing the monitoring system to wind. They alleged that all the financial matters which need SE’s approval for the onward submission to higher authorities through have been shelved for the time being causing huge inconvenience to both Public as well as the Division staff.
Meanwhile, sources said that the circle staff is even without salaries due to non availability of demand as financial matter can’t be handled by anyone without having the authority to do so. They said that they have never experienced such a bad and ‘careless’ Administrative control where people forget to even assign charge of SE among the fourteen Executive Engineers in the three districts.
They said that the G.P Fund case files have piled up , awaiting approval which has caused huge distress among the employees who find it extremely hard to even complain about it fearing backlash from the higher Authorities .
Locals have urged Governor Administration to take the matter seriously and bring the Secretary of the department and the Chief Engineers to task for taking things for granted. They alleged if the loopholes had been at the lower level, all would have trained guns and swung into action but when it comes to the Babus at higher level, administration turns toothless.
Meanwhile Governor’s Advisor to PHE and I&FC K.K Sharma said that due to code of conduct they could not post the Superintending Engineers in the circle, but added that additional charge would be assigned to some people very soon. “Due to code of conduct we could not post SEs , but I passed directions for assigning additional charge to people in both the circles.” Mr. Sharma added. (RNA)
