Newly set-up gram sachivalyas reel under shortage of staff
KARNAL: Aimed to ensure better services to villagers and transparency in governance, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Haryana government’s initiative of setting up gram secretariat is suffering due to shortage of staff.
While the government has decided to start gram sachivalayas in all 2,294 clusters of 21 districts in the state, staff shortage in government departments has affected the working as only 75-80% gram sachivalyas have been made operational so far.
As per officials working on the project of gram sachivalyas in the districts, shortage of staff is a major problem to make these sachivalyas fully operational. They add that only a day has been fixed for one gram sachivalya where officials — patwari, panchayat secretary, junior engineers of PWD, power and public health department — will visit to hear problems of people.
Sources add that even the setting up of village secretariats has increased the problem for officials of the revenue department as most of the tehsils are working with only 20-30% of the required staff.
“The setting up of these sachivalyas has increased burden on patwaris who have to visit the sachivalyas regularly, leading pendency of their office work,” said an official of Indri tehsil in Karnal district, requesting anonymity, adding that 295 cases of land dispute are pending, with only one clerk in the entire tehsil.
As per information, about 80-90 gram sachivalyas are being made operational in every district in the first phase and total 100-110 gram sachivalyas will be opened in every district by 2019. According to sources, district administration, revenue department, public health and development and panchayat departments presently have only 35-40% staff.
“Shortage of staff is a major issue as we do not have required staff to meet the demands”, said Gagandeep Singh, district development and panchayat officer of Yamunanagar. “However, we are working on a plan to deal with the shortage of staff and make all the gram sachivalyas fully operational,” he added.
However, Common Service Centres, which have been changed to Atal Sewa Kendra, are operational in most of the gram sachivalyas. “Rush is witnessed only once in a week (Monday),” said Manpreet Kaur, operator at CSC in village secretariat at Badhshow village, Karnal.
“Though government has set up sachivalyas but people prefer to visit mini-secretariats and tehsils for work,” she added.