Ex-servicemen streamline work at civic bodies

[ROUDRAM]

Each time in the past year that the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) was confronted with a particularly thorny task, the kind its employees have not been able to handle in years, the Lieutenant-Governor deputed a force of ex-servicemen to deal with it.
He did it in 2009, when an ex-serviceman was appointed as the head of the anti-encroachment cell, and then again in 2010, when he directed the DDA to depute ex-servicemen to take on the parking mafia at Nehru Place. A closer look reveals that since 2007, the L-G’s office has been responsible for deputing ex-servicemen not only to the DDA but also the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC).

“The fact is that ex-servicemen bring with them a certain set of values and ethics such as discipline, loyalty, punctuality and dedication to any task assigned to them. The Defence minister asked the public as well as the private sector to help these men, who served the country. The L-G really heeded that call,” says Ranjan Mukherjee, a serving officer with the Indian Air Force, who is on deputation as Officer on Special Duty to the L-G.


So far, the DDA has 132 ex-servicemen working for it, seven of whom occupy senior director-level positions. These men are tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that DDA land is not encroached upon, and also carry out the crucial task of keeping records. “As the DDA was absolutely dismal at record-keeping, the L-G bought in these ex-servicemen, who set up a special cell and did a remarkable job of streamlining DDA’s massive stack of documents,” says a senior DDA official.

The MCD has approximately 30 ex-servicemen, with three officers at the commissioner-level while the rest are trained para-military commandos. They are entrusted with activities that require enforcement, such as regulation of parking and removal of illegal hoardings and billboards. “They have increased the MCD’s revenue. For instance, its revenue from billboards used to be around Rs 33 crore annually, but after ex-servicemen started checking for illegal hoardings, the revenue for just the first quarter of 2010 touched Rs 36 crore,” says an official.

At the DTC, the L-G’s office recommended that 1,000 ex-servicemen be appointed as drivers and conductors, and another 12-15 ex-servicemen be posted as inspectors.

However, not everyone is happy with this trend of ex-servicemen being hired. A senior official in the L-G’s Secretariat said, “A lot of people within the DDA and the MCD resent the appointment of ex-servicemen. Their main problem, of course, is that most ex-servicemen refuse to participate in any kind of corrupt activities. This has led to the DDA and the MCD shying away from giving them key responsibilities.”

He said the situation has become pretty dire, and some ex-servicemen have even expressed their desire to quit these postings. “They come complaining about the petty manner in which they are being treated, and say they feel like quitting,” the official adds.

Officials at the L-G’s Secretariat recall a face-off with the MCD in 2010, when the civic body said ex-servicemen are not eligible for director-level postings. “The L-G then intervened and ensured that these men were hired,” the official says.

[desire4me04]

*=:service men have values and live upto them

[ROUDRAM]

[quote author=desire4me04 link=topic=151030.msg1761820#msg1761820 date=1296757243]
*=:service men have values and live upto them
[/quote] @gr33d proud to be a son of an ex-service man