The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Under the scanner, always

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Tuesday, Sep 23, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Under the scanner, always

Scores of employees of IT majors like Satyam, Wipro and Infosys are being shown the door. Under these circumstances what is the point in recruiting new candidates, wondered a participant in the JKC Student meet organised last week.

“IT companies or for that matter many other companies have a continual appraisal system to monitor the performance of their staff. When their performance is not up to the mark, the employees concerned are given two or three chances to mend their ways and improve themselves. Those who do not heed the advice are then shown the door,” said the Centre Incharge of Satyam at Vizag, Ravi.

“There are quite a few employees who feel that their job is over once they get a foothold in a corporate company. On the contrary, it is then that the actual marathon begins.

The performance of each and every employee, including me, is monitored so that no one goes off track or takes it easy,” he said.

“This is because the 20 or 25 per cent ‘lethargic’ staff who hardly work, is a burden on the rest. They demoralise sincere workers as the latter have to take the extra load while being paid the same salary.”

“The good thing is that Indian IT companies are still giving a chance to ‘non-performers’ to improve themselves while their counterparts in the US show them the door without prior warning.”

So techies, it’s time to tighten your belts.

A misnomer!

e-Seva which took the city by storm in the last decade has now become more a tormentor of the customers. Particularly at Seethammadhara centre where the queues move at snail’s pace.

One has to stand or sit for at least a couple of hours and just when one’s turn comes, they announce `link failure’.

For those who cannot spend more than a couple of hours, it would take four or five attempts to get the services. The staff also do not pretend they are doing any seva or service and there is none to receive any complaints. `Only two entries per head’, reads the board and if a person has four jobs to be done on his own name, he is still bluntly refused.

On top of this is the overloading of the server. While the power bills are received fairly quickly, the house-tax payments are inordinately delayed. Seva is becoming a misnomer.

Showcasing City of Destiny

Visakha Utsav, started as an annual extravaganza on the beach road to showcase the tourism potential of Visakhapatnam over a decade ago has become jinxed. For one or other reason, it has not been held for years.

The purpose, when it was started was to invite entrepreneurs and tour operators for promoting Visakhapatnam into a destination for leisure tourists.

With the lush-green valleys in Araku, million-year-old caves at Borra, the natural rock formations, Buddhist sites and sun-kissed beaches, the city also has the potential to attract not only domestic tourists but also people from abroad for leisure tourism.

However, either due to cyclonic rains or man-made reasons like elections and lack of initiative, it is becoming casualty regularly. Hopefully, it will be conducted on fixed dates every year so that the purpose of starting it is achieved.

B. Madhu Gopal, Prabhakkar Sharma and Santosh Patnaik

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