AP: ‘Foul play’ in posting in-charge officers in factories dept

Vijayawada: Even as the AP government has taken up the decentralisation of administration by restructuring districts for good governance, the factories department’s move to arrange in-charge officers in districts lacked transparency and there are allegations of foul play.

The department of factories made certain arrangements for the revamped 26 districts by posting officials as district in-charge to coordinate with the district administration for works pertaining to the department.

In some districts, the existing deputy chief inspectors of factories have been retained in the same districts. In some cases, they have been shifted as in-charge inspector of factories to other districts and vice versa.

For instance, in Chittoor, the existing deputy chief inspector of factories has been shifted to Tirupati and the same official has been posted as in-charge inspector of factories for Chittoor. In the case of Anantapur, Kurnool and Kadapa, all the three existing deputy chief inspectors of factories have been retained in the same position and they also have been made in-charge inspectors for Sri Satyasai, Nandyala and Annamayya districts.

There is no mention of the existing deputy inspectors of factories from erstwhile districts of East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna and Srikakulam, as to where they have been shifted and in what capacity. The memo issued by the director of factories is not clear about this.

Moreover, the inspector of factories working in Srikakulam has been made in-charge inspector of factories in Alluri Sitaramaraju district. Similar is the case with several deputy inspectors of factories who have been made in-charge inspectors of factories at districts located at far-off places.

Sources in the factories department say that the state government has also made transfer of mainly IAS and IPS officers by retaining the existing collectors and SPs in the same district in a majority of cases and appointing new officers even by elevating some of them to the newly set up districts with an expectation for good governance. But, in the case of the factories department, no standard procedure has been adopted to appoint officers either on a regular basis or as in-charge officers. This hinted at acts of favouritism and corruption.

Moreover, the department faces a staff crunch with over 10 posts of inspector of factories remaining vacant for a long time even as these officials play the main role at the field level in the districts in the issuing of licences to set up factories and also to keep a tab on their day-to-day functioning to ensure industrial safety in the state.