Government order of July 28, 2010 laid down some important guidelines for transfer/posting of Government employees which the concerned authorities were supposed to implement as policy matter. 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. The employees are required to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the controlling officers stipulating that employee under transfer or posting will undertake to complete the task assigned to him in time and report the progress of the work to authorities at proper intervals. The exercise ultimately aims to improve governance and set forth the targets that have to be completed within the specific time.
Commissioner Secretary PDD has invoked this order with the purpose of streamlining the functioning of his department. It is nearly six years when the order was issued but its implementation was almost ignored for all these years. If the PDD has taken it up now, it is a welcome though belated step. Incidentally, PDD is a department that has been usually coming under criticism because of the importance of the nature of services it is providing, viz, power. Most of the public complaints recorded from time to time generally pertain either to PDD or to CAPD. It is so because both the departments have direct dealing with a vast population. In a formal order issued on April 2, Commissioner Secretary PDD has now invoked the clauses of the above mentioned order called Transfer Policy. He has laid stress on accountability of employees of the department in order to pinpoint who has to be held responsible for what discrepancy or deficit in service. There are several wings in the department with specific functionality. Each wing has to be made responsible for delivery or for redressing the complaints lodged against it by the people. By and large, the deficit areas of the department are 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. For example, 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 redress 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.
In a sense, this would be called distribution of work. In practical terms, it makes easy for the authorities to make judgment about the performance of the employees deputed to that particular wing of PDD. Earlier also, they had been assigned the task. Why was not periodical review of their performance made and action taken if it was not satisfactory? The point is that an ordinary citizen and ordinary consumer will not be much interested in why and how a transfer/posting is made and what purpose it would serve. Those matters are exclusively administrative matters. What the consumer is most interested in is whether delivery system of the department is efficient and responds to his needs, complaints and requirements. Moreover, we have always given due importance to the element of accountability, What the Commissioner Secretary PDD plans to do is a step towards that objective. We agree that accountability has to be institutionalized and it cannot be an arbitrary decision of the higher authorities. Of course the administration’s priority is not to go on a fault finding spree but to make things move and work and run the administration smoothly. Urban-rural alternate posting is something talked about so often and so freely and almost so non-seriously that people have lost faith in any commitment the Government might make on this count. Nevertheless, in the context of new policy, the Commissioner Secretary intends to see that nobody runs away from performing particular tenure of service in rural areas is to be seen and watched. Non-performing employees will be termed as dead wood and the law will follow its course. That is certainly a good step towards accountability and we appreciate it. In final analysis, the old saying is that the taste of pudding is in eating. It is the delivery that will bring credit to the policy planners in the Power Development Department.
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