Deccan
Chronicle: Bengaluru: Monday, 27 April 2015.
At 19, Nitya
(name changed), wished to contribute to make her society a better place and
registered to become a civic warden. She was trained as a nurse to give
first-aid to accident victims.
“I had seen
many people die due to unavailability of first aid. When ambulances did not
arrive on time, patients paid a price. I tried to contribute in my own way,”
she recalls. Her willingness to volunteer even earned her Rs 175 per day. Like
Nitya, many from her and other colleges volunteered to be civil warden. But
now, due to the attitude of the Home
Guards and Civil Defence departments, thousands of students are shying away
from volunteering.
The reason:
wardens became victims of their causes! They go unpaid for years and do not
even get allowances for travel and food, which they are entitled to. These
wardens have not received allowances for the last two years, while the
department claims otherwise. Financial
irregularities have taken a toll on many of the department’s programmes, while
officials claim to be ‘clueless’ on how the money is spent. According to the
documents available with Deccan Chronicle, since 2005, the department has no
record or account of the money allocated
and spent by the department. RTI responses to queries on department’s expenses
seem exorbitant!
The
department claims to have spent Rs 3.34 lakh on office expenses, while it has
spent Rs 1.57 lakh on fuel in March 2014. It says it has given Rs 79,830 as DA
in February 2014, while wardens have not received any allowance for the last
two years.
For a
department whose expenditure on supplies is nil from April 2013 to February
2014, in just 30 days, the expense has shot up to Rs 5.97 lakh! Surprisingly,
the department has no records to substantiate what were the materials and
supplies!
“Even after
several attempts, the officials refused to answer any questions related to
finances. ‘Information not available with the department’ was the only reply we
received,” say Raghu B.V and Arpuda Rajan, RTI activists, who are fighting for
the cause of wardens.
Wardens
allege that the money allocated for them and other department expenses is
credited into the account of chief warden P.R.S Chetan, from here it is
supposed to go to wardens. “But the funds are being diverted into other
accounts and there is manipulation of accounts,” said a warden.
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