The Hindu : New Delhi News : DDA officials cry for foreign visits

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 15, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

DDA officials cry for foreign visits

Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar

'Officers on deputation hijacking trips'

NEW DELHI: Senior officials of the Delhi Development Authority are up in arms against the policy of the top brass to mostly send officials-on-deputation on foreign visits while overlooking the need to send its own cadre for training programmes abroad. While officials-on-deputation leave the organisation after some time, those of the cadre are the ones who are required to fulfil the various responsibilities in future.

Sources in the DDA say it is ironical that in 90 per cent of the foreign visits, it is the eight or nine officials-on-deputation in the organisation who are sent abroad while the genuine need to upgrade the skills of the nearly 500 A Category officials of the DDA is ignored. Considering that there are about 21,000 employees in the DDA, the percentage of visits undertaken by the DDA cadre becomes less than even 0.1 per cent of the visits undertaken by the officers-on-deputation.

According to a senior official, when officers come on deputation, it is believed that they are already trained and would help the organisation tide over various difficulties. But when they are sent out, it indicates that they are not trained enough and need to be trained more than the DDA cadre officials.

But the main area of concern is that most of these trips are considered "pleasure trips'', for otherwise the DDA top brass would have considered sending DDA cadre officials -- and here too only those officials who have at least five years left to retire, because for utilising the knowledge gained in such trips it is essential that the officials stay back in the organisation for a fairly long period of time to serve it.

The matter was raised recently by some DDA members at the Budget meeting of the Authority and the Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi, B.L. Joshi, who is also the Chairman of the DDA, had expressed the view that the first priority should be given to DDA officials to go out on foreign visits. This was also one of the issues discussed at the weekly meeting held by the Lieutenant-Governor with DDA officials.

Among those who have been abroad recently are officials from the Audit and Accounts Services and the Railway Personnel Service who are on deputation with the DDA.

The DDA Vice-Chairman, Madhukar Gupta, who is due to leave the organisation for a posting at the Centre next month, also undertook a week-long trip to Australia last week to make a presentation. The DDA cadre feels it is time the rules are changed. "A month from now Mr Gupta may not be in DDA, so how can his journey in view of the Commonwealth Games 2010 be justified?'' they ask, adding that "the justification of being accompanied by a DDA cadre official does not hold good as the place could have well been occupied by another official who would stay on in the DDA till the Games are held.''

Mr Gupta, however, believes that the staff grievance is misplaced. "We are planning a detailed human resource development strategy which would also look into this aspect as we want to take a holistic approach to the issue so that nothing happens in an ad hoc manner,'' he said.

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