A little over one month into office, the Trivendra Singh Rawat Government has started asserting that it would prove different from the previous dispensation.
To begin with, it has embarked on disciplining the employees of the secretariat, deemed as the nerve centre of the state administration. As the first step, the secretariat administration (SAD) is all set to make it mandatory for the employees to don the identity cards on their necks. Its objective is clear- to identify the secretariat employees from the visitors, particularly those who are inclined to loiter around the corridors of the edifice in search of potential customers needing their help as middlemen to have their works done. If SAD executes the order the genuine secretariat employees would be easily differentiated from those on deputation, given the change effected in the colours of the ribbons they would be made to wear.
However, things started barely a week back as SAD cracked the whip on the home guards and PRD jawans, making it mandatory for them to work with their uniform on. The SAD officers justified the action, saying that some of the personnel working in these two departments as computer operators and clerks made it a habit to pose as employees of the secretariat while ‘secretariat’ being embossed on their vehicles. The officers are convinced that such employees were inclined to earn quick bucks while posing themselves as holding important posts in the secretariat. They say that the recent order would deter them from earning at the expense of those who approach them to have their works done in lieu of money.
However, the wilier among them are buying time while telling the SAD officers that their uniforms are being stitched by the tailors. They are hoping against hope that the SAD would soon put the order on the back burner, thus ensuring that they can use their ‘clout’ to earn quick bucks for some more days at the expense of the gullible, say the observers privy to the working of the secretariat. However, the honest among them are happy with the wearing of uniform being made mandatory. They believe that it would make the charlatans to come to the reality.
Sources say that the track record of SAD cracking such whips is not very encouraging. “A few years ago, they framed such norms while vowing to implement them strictly. But what happened is that the employees did not care to conform to the norms with SAD choosing to look the other way. We hope that the same would not repeat this time,” said an observer.
Talking to The pioneer, an employee of the secretariat said that in case the additional secretary and those above him in hierarchical echelons start to don I- cards while on duty they have no objection to adhere to it. “But in case the higher- ups chose to ignore the norm it would be difficult to enforce it on others,” he said.