Jul 02

Official losing salary for being tardy

Punishment, Policy, Governance, Babudom, Maharashtra, Reform1 Comment
By Ashish

Can you really believe this ? That Government officials would actually lose salary for being late to office. Most citizens of this country, who run after officials, and have to put up with babus who are not be found in their seats, or have not yet reached office even many hours after the scheduled time, would welcome this news from Nagpur:

NAGPUR: On Tuesday, Mayor Maya Iwnate showed she means business. Taking serious cognisance of complaints by citizens about senior officials in the Civil Lines office of Nagpur Municipal Corporation arriving late for work, she directed deduction of one day’s salary and issuance of show-cause notices to these staffers.

Given our cynical nature, how easy is it for us to believe that this is a one-off thing, or this was actually a stunt, not to be repeated. Unfortunately, such is the reputation of the bureaucracy in this country that very few people will actually believe in such news.

Jul 02

Education officer penalized under RTI Act

Education, Punishment, Information, Babudom, RTI, Law, Delhi, AccountableNo Comments
By Ashish

I normally celebrate every use of RTI, and write about it as much as I can; in the hope that all these articles can make a difference and encourage more people to use this tool to get the information that they desire rather than wait behind the dark wall of babudom. Waiting to get information before the world of RTI was a very very slow and painful process; the successes that I have seen and read about with the use of RTI makes it a very powerful and fairly successful tool (what this means is that if you have seen individual benefits of RTI, please write about it).
One of the essential parts of the RTI Act is about penalizing delays or refusal to provide information. The fines may not seem very significant, but they aren’t negligible either (going upto a maximum of Rs. 25,000 per case). Consider the following case where a fine was employed:

NEW DELHI: The Central Information Commission (CIC) has slapped a penalty of Rs 25,000 on the School of Planning and Architecture’s public information officer for inaction on a Right to Information appeal for over three months.

Read the rest of this entry »