Transfer and posting in State Secretariat: At whose behest are rules broken?
STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: The phrase "rules are made to be broken" is a reality in the transfer and posting of second and third grade employees in the State Secretariat.
The Secretariat Administration Department (SAD), parent of all departments in Janata Bhawan, is at the helm of affairs in transfer and posting of second and third grade employees. The department has a lobby that knows how to bend and break rules meant for transfer and posting.
Examples are many. The same officials of the same department and branch working on the same table for 6-15 years are common in many departments in the Secretariat. This is in stark contrast to the rule that "an employee has to be transferred after working in a particular department for three years in a row". On the contrary, there are also examples of employees transferred thrice a year. At whose behest the existing rules are violated? If this is the situation at the State Secretariat, one can guess what the situation is exactly like in directorate offices.
A few days back, a retired employee wrote a letter to Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who also holds the SAD portfolio, pointing out the failure on the part of the department in proper management of transfer and posting. He requested the Chief Minister to intervene and untangle the mess.
A section of Secretariat employees have the habit of working at their own whims and fancies as they can't be transferred outside the Secretariat. When the SAD took the move to make biometric attendance (punching machines were installed in a block), protests from the employees made the department to roll back to the age-old system of signing attendance registers – a system in which a section employees can dodge their arrival and departure timings at ease. The move was taken in accordance with the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commission.
Apart from allowing some employees work in the same table for more than three years, a few retired employees are also re-employed on the pretext of merit and experience. This is allowed for a few special cases, but riding on that it has been made a rule.
Of late, the SAD is taking a move to close attendance registers of all departments after 10 am. How long this stricture will last is something to keep tabs on. When the BJP came to power at Dispur, it made the rule of closing the main gate of Janata Bhawan by 10.30 am. However, that rule continued for few days, and now everything is back to square one.
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