Hindustan Times: Chandigarh: Saturday, 26 July 2014.
A typical
sarkari lacunae and administrative indifference caused an inordinate delay in
the releasing of June salary to nine information commissioners and other
members of the staff at the Punjab Information Commission, transparency
watchdog created to implement the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005.
The 55-odd
contractual employees and information commissioners, however, heaved a sigh of
relief on Thursday when they received the pay seven days before the July salary
was due. The episode has brought to the fore the alleged nonchalant style of
functioning of Dr Arvinder Singh, secretary to the commission and responsible
for taking up issues with the state government.
The gross
salary of the information commissioners is about Rs. 1.5 lakh a month, while
their support staff and employees of other wings are appointed on contract.
Each commissioner is provided with a chauffeur-driven car, peon, reader, and a
personal assistant. One post of the commissioner is vacant. The nine
commissioners include four IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officers and two
journalists.
Commission
secretary Dr Arvinder Singh shrugged off his responsibility, saying: “Please
ask C Roul (principal secretary).” Pressed further, he said: “Even I have not
received my salary. It is not my job to prepare the salary bills of the
commission employees.” Reacting to the question, principal secretary
(governance reforms) C Roul said: “You are the first person who has brought
this (delay in salary) to my notice. The secretary to the information
commission should have alerted me at least over telephone.”
Upset that
the secretary did not take up the serious issue with him, Roul said after a
flurry of queries: “This happened because the superintendent who had the powers
of the drawing and disbursing officer was promoted. The salary bills were sent
to the treasury on July 22 after the new superintendent took charge. But this
delay could have been avoided had Dr Singh sounded me. It is strange.”
Well-placed
sources in the commission alleged that the inept style of functioning of the
secretary was at the core of a slew of administrative problems the employees as
well as the information commissioners faced, a charge that the secretary
denied, saying: “Those responsible for preparing the salary bills don’t do it
well in time.”
Sources say
ever since chief information commissioner RI Singh, former Punjab chief
secretary, demitted office last month, the secretary does not take up the
routine administrative issues of the commission with the government on
priority. RI Singh’s salary, too, was released on Thursday. “The exCIC used to
flag such routine issues and resolve them quickly. In his absence, the
secretary was responsible to raise these matters with the government, a section
of the information commissioners said.
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