Last Updated on January 13, 2021 at 8:36 pm
The common man of J&K is fully aware of many poor policies of the past governments. One another poorly executed plan by a previous regime which caused a huge loss to the government exchequer has been brought to the public’s attention. Jammu and Kashmir State Overseas Employment Corporation Limited, poorly planned to set up its office at New Delhi without any meaningful activity, caused meaningless expenditure of Rs 47.86 lakh on paying salary of staff, hiring of premises and other expenses.
Head Office of the Company couldn’t select and recommend any candidate to the New Delhi office during the entire time period i.e. December 2010 to June 2016. Consequently, New Delhi office could not be of any use to candidates. This lack of choosing candidates during such a long time shows the inefficiency of those who were behind this. This total expenditure Rs 47.86 lakh from the taxpayers’ hard-earned money was wasted on payment of salary of staff and rent of the office premises as the main purpose behind its setting up couldn’t be achieved.
Out of this total money spent, government spent Rs 20.10 lakh on rent and Rs 19.17 lakh on salary of General Manager. Rs 2.49 lakh were spent on paying workers and maintenance expenses were recorded as Rs 76 thousand. Along with that, Rs 5.34 lakh were also spent on advertising and Travel.
Jammu and Kashmir State Overseas Employment Corporation Limited (JKSOECL) was set up to assist the educated/ skilled labour force of the State in getting employment within and outside the country. The Jammu and Kashmir Government sanctioned it in November 2009. Government’s intention behind setting it up was to assist the candidates in the completion of formalities like obtaining passport, extending passport validity, visa clearance, airlines reservation and authentication of documents from the concerned agencies. Even though, office of the General Manager (Marketing) was established in New Delhi from December 2010, it was only started functioning from March 2012.
Post of one General Manager (Marketing), one Assistant Marketing Manager, one Computer Assistant and one orderly (contractual) was to be assigned while only one General Manager (Marketing) and one worker were posted in Delhi office. The Company was also paying a monthly rent of Rs 30,000 for office. General Manager (Marketing) was employed for 28 months from August 2011 to December 2013, while the office rent was paid for 2.5 years upto June 2016.
This incident shows that those sitting in government offices don’t think twice before wasting public’s hard-earned money. Governments have always been eager to collect taxes from the common man, and it seems like once they get hold of that, they hardly care if that amount is being used for public goods or being wasted as a consequence of their inefficiency.
