Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Nov 28: Over a score of Zonal Education Officers (ZEOs) and Zonal Education Planning Officers (ZEPOs) besides dealing assistants in district Udhampur have made to pay the price of poor internet services, especially in the remote areas, after the Government stopped their salary for failure to transfer money on account of cooking cost under Mid Day Meal Scheme through DBT to the accounts of children in nine zones of Udhampur district.
Chief Education Officer, Udhampur, after the instructions from the higher authorities stopped the salary of the ZEOs/ ZEPOs and dealing assistants for this month in the nine Zones of district Udhampur, alleging that these officers failed to transfer money to the account of students from Ist to 8th class under the scheme through DBT.
Interestingly, the schools are closed and non-functional since March this year due to Covid-19, but the Education department is carrying on with the MDM Scheme and drawing funds for the same. Even the distribution of other articles to the students is going on `officially’ and utilization certificates are being sought even before the disbursement from the concerned officers.
One of the officers from remote Dudu-Basantgarh areas without being quoted revealed that this is high handedness on the part of higher officials. He said many students of this remote area do not have bank accounts. A large number even do not have Aadhar cards. The internet facility is very poor and this is not practically feasible to complete the task under such circumstances.
Another officer claimed they have been made scapegoats. The senior officers are silent over the basic problems. The matter was brought to their notice as well. They are humiliating the officers who despite shortage of manpower, are putting their all the efforts during Covid threat to perform all sorts of duties assigned to them. He said some of ZEOs are retiring within 4-5 months and they are submitting all the information as required by higher authorities by collecting from about 120 -190 schools falling under their jurisdiction. The timing of information sought by higher authorities is crucial i.e submit the information with in two days, with in one day before 4 pm today, before 2pm today even before 11AM and so on.
Another ZEO said Govt has issued instructions to do DBT of cooking cost ranging from Rs 78 to 174 in the accounts of students under MDM through JKPASYS in the month of May. It is very tough and tedious job to enter particulars of each student. Many students’ account numbers are not active. It takes nearly 10 minutes to feed all the particulars of the students that too depends on the speed of net and availability of JKPASYS connection. In some cases the Treasury staff is not cooperating.
CEO Udhampur, PD Sharma when contacted said that out of the 11 officers from two Zones Majalta and Babey have completed the task, but the action has been taken against officers of nine blocks in Udhampur. They had given sufficient time. He had pressure from the top and after instructions he with held the salary of officials from 9 zones.
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