Kashmir Reader: Srinagar: Friday, June 22, 2018.
The Jammu and Kashmir Projects Construction Corporation (JKPCC) has ‘selectively’ enhanced the wages of 5 candidates out of 30 hired for various posts over the years, aggrieved candidates alleged.
The various “need-based” posts, the aggrieved candidates said, were filled on consolidated basis with a salary of Rs 5, 500 for the post.
However, the JKPCC, “surreptitiously enhanced the wages of 5 blue-eyed candidates without following any criteria” in July last year, Zahoor Ahmad Dar, an aggrieved candidate told Kashmir Reader.
Dar, a double postgraduate who also has a diploma in computers was himself hired as a Computer-cum-Photostat operator way back in the year 2003 along with a few other candidates.
“They have enhanced the wages of these candidates by up to Rs 4,000 purely on pick and choose basis. One of the benefitted candidates has been hired as a sweeper. On the other hand, they have ignored qualified candidates on the wage enhancement,” Dar alleged.
While the wages of three of the “blue eyed” candidates have been enhanced by Rs 3,000 as per Dar, two of them have been given an enhancement of Rs 4,500 each, he alleged.
Smelling rat in the wage enhancement, the ignored candidates had even approached to the then MD, JKPCC, Daleep Thusu “but to no avail”, complained Dar.
“I was compelled to register a complaint with the CM’s Grievance Cell,” he added. Although the Grievance Cell took up the matter with the JKPCC authorities to Dar’s utter satisfaction, however the corporation, Dar said, “misled even the chief minister’s grievance cell”.
“They issued an order, which supposedly declared the order enhancing the wages as null and void. But upon filing an RTI application later, it was revealed that the blue-eyed candidates are being paid the enhanced wages even on due date,” Dar said.
The order supposedly revoking the wage enhancement, which the JKPCC even “produced before the chief minister’s grievance cell” last year was issued on July 10 last year as per Dar.
“The orders sanctioning enhancement of wages to the blue-eyed candidates were issued on July 6, 2017,” he said. The JKPCC, Dar alleged was even “hoodwinking” the State Information Commission (SIC) where he has registered an appeal against the corporation for not providing him the sought information under the RTI Act.
“I filed an RTI application through my father at the JKPCC seeking information about the qualification and enhancement of the consolidated workers, but even after appealing the First Appellant Authority (FAA), they did not provide the information,” Dar alleged.
Dar said that his second appeal before the SIC was disposed of by the Chief Information Commissioner as the JKPCC pleaded before the commission that the delay in providing the information was “not intentional and happened inadvertently” during the Durbar Move to Jammu in October-November last year. Admitting to the random enhancement of wages over the years, Managing Director, JKPCC, Vikar Mustafa Shonthu told Kashmir Reader that the left out candidates were being considered for the benefits.
“We have already sent a file to the government. We will keep a ceiling for the ones, which have been given the enhancement. At the same time, the candidates who have been left out would be given an enhancement,” Shonthu added.
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