Letters to the Editor

Babus sans service get salaries

Given that I retired from service about four years back after negotiating the corridors of some nine service portals of the state and the central governments, the front page news item under the caption, ‘Babus go missing after graft charges, keep drawing salary’ (The Sentinel, 2 November 2017) drew our attention to make a pressing rejoinder to it.

The news contributed by the staff reporter suggests that a section of babus are currently drawing hefty salaries without doing any work at all. In fact, the news revolves primarily around two incumbent covent servants of administrative cadre who are reported to have received salary for doing no work!  One, who is manning the State Labour Welfare Department as its secretary, went missing soon after his involvement in a multi-crore scam in Social Welfare Department, is reported to have been receiving salaries even as he has been absent for last ten months! Parallel to it, another officer of the same cadre is reported to have been drawing salary for the last ten months without doing any work either.

A school is seen querying as to what would have been the course of action against the erring officers referred to, had they been in some other cadres.  There emerged many diplomatic answers to it. However, our answer to the query of the school lies in following paragraph:

 About a decade and half back, I was manning the Rangia Division (Irrigation) as its executive engineer in charge. I saw three engineers on the pay roll of the division remaining absent without permission. Their salaries were held up for three months until they had applied for leave for those days of absence, to my satisfaction.

Niranjan Kakati,

Guwahati-20.