Food and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy on Wednesday questioned Chief Minister Raghubar Das’ diktat to dismiss and not just suspend nonperforming lower rung officials and PDS dealers.
Instead, the Minister put onus on the Government for the malfunctioning of the public distribution system. He underlined the missing guidelines for Food Security Act (FSA) and inordinate vacancies in the system that need to be corrected first.
The CM while attending Janta Darbar on Tuesday had got angry over a complaint coming from Dumka regarding non- disbursal of PDS grains and ordered the Food and Civil Supplies Secretary to dismiss such dealers and not just put them under suspension.
Roy held a press conference to express his dissent, and cautioned against taking stern action like dismissal etc, citing legal remedies in place. “How can you dismiss anyone without providing him an opportunity to explainIJ He can move to the court. Also, power of dismissing a dealer lies with the SDO, and not the Secretary. Such unilateral decisions would not do any good to the system,” said the Minister.
Visibly looking offended, Roy went on counting the loopholes existing in the system which, according to him, were hampering the larger functioning of the Department.
“We have adopted the FSA but still we don’t have guidelines to provide compensation if any beneficiary does not get ration on time. This would have fixed the responsibility of the officials. 138 posts out of 160 of Block Supply Officer and 117 out of 129 of Marketing Officers are vacant. The file moved to appoint Cooperative Inspectors came to a standstill at the CMO! State does not have PDS control order in place yet. What I mean that instead of expressing rage we need to build a foolproof system to minimise irregularities,” said the Minister.
He also put the Government in the dock by asking about response of the district administrations to the letter sent by the Chief Secretary’s office on May 12, 2015 ensuring specific inspections of PDS shops. “Till date, none of the DCs has responded to it. If any order is issued from the top level and it is not being implemented, then senior officials should be held responsible for that. We also need a transfer-posting policy in the Department,” added the Minister.
Also, putting terms for the future, Roy said that the Department should be kept in loop in advance before any such review that cannot be vague and instead should be specific and objective in nature. He also countered the CM’s instruction to rollout DBT for rice.
“It is a policy decision. For that you also need a sound system and we can get such system in place not before July. We have already adopted DBT for kerosene in few districts and DBT for rice can be tested later on.
Also, DBT romanticizes more as even progressive states have shown reluctance in this regard in the want of a foolproof system,” added Roy.
The Minister, on the occasion, counted some of the steps underway to improve PDS in the State. “PDS reforms would be complete by April. We are also handing over implementation part to the directorate and Secretariat would just take policy decisions and monitor,” he said.