IIS officers protest transfers: Posts don’t exist, needs ignored
ASSOCIATION WROTE TO I&B SECRETARY SAYING HEADS OF MEDIA UNITS WERE NOT CONSULTED BEFORE THE TRANSFERS
NEW DELHI: Indian information service (IIS) officers have flagged “discrepancies and shortcomings” in the fresh round of postings after the Union ministry of information and broadcasting issued transfer orders late last month “without consulting the heads of the media units”.
The IIS Group ‘A’ officials’ association has alleged that some senior officials have been transferred to stations where the posts allotted to them do not exist, while some have been transferred to places where multiple officials have been designated the same role without any clarity on the allocation of work. Some have been transferred from Delhi to other states.
“The transfer orders have been issued without consulting the heads of the media units or taking into account their requirement,” the association said in a letter to I&B secretary NK Sinha on November 29.
The association alleged that the 24 postings announced by the ministry on November 24 will adversely impact the flow of information and hamper the functioning of government’s broadcast divisions such as the Press Information Bureau, the Directorate of Audio Visual Publicity and Doordarshan.
“Some of the officers have been posted to places where no such posts exist, for example in Moradabad, Agra and Varanasi. In the first two places, there is no office of the media unit (of PIB) from where they would be drawing their salary,” the letter said.
It also said that reallocation of posts in some cases will affect the focus of key sectors.
“The additional director general, PIB, Ranchi has been directed to work from the directorate of field publicity in Moradabad, which takes away the focus from Left Wing Extremist area.”
While Sinha did not respond to HT’s query, sources in the ministry said the postings have been in the works for a while.
Centre’s publicity wing, PIB, has been directed to undertake campaigns to counter any negative publicity about schemes and programmes such as demonetisation and GST through ads on social and traditional media.