*Rural-Urban rotation in postings made mandatory
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Apr 4: In order to make accountable employees of Power Development Department, which otherwise is facing huge problems in ensuring effective delivery of services on various counts, the Government has fixed parameters to assess their performance and made it mandatory for them to sign Memorandum of Understanding with their controlling officers before taking up their assignment on transfer/posting. The failure of the officials to meet the MoU targets would result into their being declared deadwood and proceeded under the norms.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that State Government vide Order No.861-GAD of 2010 dated July 28, 2010 had notified a policy on transfer/posting of Government employees. One of the clauses of the Transfer Policy mandates that all the departments will issue necessary instructions/ orders in consonance with the provisions of the policy so as to serve its objects and purposes.
By making use of this clause albeit after a delay of nearly six years, the Commissioner/ Secretary to Government, Power Development Department, Dheeraj Gupta has vide Order No.60 dated April 2, 2016, fixed parameters to assess the performance of PDD employees.
This has been done keeping in view the fact that department faces high level of AT&C losses, significant gap between revenue potential and actual collection, relatively high damage rate of distribution transformers, frequent instances of unscheduled curtailment, preponderance of un-metered flat rate connections and other problems of like nature which adversely affect its service delivery on the one hand and has significant fiscal implications on the other hand.
For the employees posted in EM&RE Wing-Electric Divisions, the key areas of assessment of performance include revenue collection, distribution transformer metering, consumer metering, distribution transformer damage, unscheduled outages and redressal of consumer grievances. Similarly, feeder metering, power transformer damage, unscheduled outages, timely completion of projects and frequency of accidents would be key areas of assessment of performance of officers and officials posted in EM&RE Wing-Sub Transmission Divisions.
For S&O Wing-Construction Divisions, key areas of performance assessment include timely completion of projects, completion of projects with most efficient utilization of resources, adherence to prudent utility norms and metering of grids while as key areas vis-à-vis Commercial and Survey Wing include transparency in power purchase costs, reduction in cost of power purchased, authentication of AT&C losses based on IT data and relay and meter testing. Similarly, key areas have also been defined for other wings of the department.
The employees will enter into an MoU with their controlling officers before taking up their assignment on transfer/posting. It has been explicitly mentioned in the order that existing employees on a post will have to enter into such MoU within a fortnight of issuance of this order failing which they will be substituted by other suitable employees.
“If the performance of the employee is below the standards given in the MoU, it will be deemed to be below job requirement and the continuation of such employee on the post for a full tenure will be deemed as not in public interest”, reads the order.
In case of repeated non-performance/default in meeting the MoU targets, the officer will be declared as deadwood and proceeded against under extant norms. The performance will be reviewed quarterly for this purpose.
From now onwards, the department will ensure rotation of employees on posts of different nature so as to maximize the changes of each employees to work in the posts of different categories. “The postings in the newly created project wings and Project Monitoring Unit will be solely on the basis of merit, professional competence and suitability duly determined and will be made only by the administrative department at all levels”, sources said.
Every employee will be required to serve in rural as well as urban areas and considering the relative number of posts in rural and urban areas, a posting in an urban area will be followed by a posting in rural area and vice-versa. A grievance redressal mechanism will also be set up at the level of Development Commissioner Power to deal with grievances of the employees relating to transfers and postings. “These parameters and instructions will be applicable to employees of the department from Junior Engineer level up to the level of Executive Engineer and equivalent only”, sources said.
Follow our WhatsApp channel