Rajahmundry: Staff in treasury wing withhold bills for bribes

Rajahmundry: Even as the state government had made online transaction of files from department to department mandatory to ensure transparency and their clearance expeditiously, there seems to be no relief to the government employees, teachers and pensioners as their bills fail to get cleared at the treasury office, unless they pay bribe to the staff in East Godavari.

The government employees and teachers submit various bills to claim travel allowance, dearness allowance, medical expenses reimbursement, PRC arrears, GPF and others online to the concerned treasury office every month. 

However, the bills are remaining uncleared till the staff in the department are bribed. Till the bribe is offered, the treasury staff keep saying that the documents submitted are not proper to claim bills and delay the process of clearning. The employees should understand that they need to offer bribes to get their bills cleared.

In case, any of the employees makes an issue of it and refuses to pay the bribe, his bills will be kept pending for a long time. In a few instances, it is learnt that the staff in the treasury wing ask for bribes openly without any hesitation. The employees too are used to bargain and give some money  to get their work done right away.

As per norms, the treasury department after receipt of bills from the government servants, has to clear them verifying if they are in the proper format and checking if all the relevant documents are attached.

The cleared bills will be forwarded to the concerned banks which in turn remit the amount into the bank accounts of the applicants. The amount of bribe being asked by the treasury staff varies and it will be in terms of percentage ranging from 5-10 or more of the total  amount sanctioned in the bills. 

There are allegations that the treasury staff share the bribe amount among themselves at the end of the day   and that a part of it is also given to the senior officers, excluding the honest ones, to avoid trouble from them.

The government employees, who get transferred every 2-3 years, say that they have been giving bribes to the treasury wing in all the districts. A senior government officer having 32 years of experience said, “I worked in several districts in the state but could not find any treasury office where the employees are honest. Unless we pay bribe, our bills remain uncleared.” 

Rajahmundry district treasury officer P. Parvathi said, “We are clearly mentioning the audit objections and also the documents to be attached before returning the bills without clearance. Some of our staff members might be taking  bribes but  we are certainly helping  employees to get their bills cleared. Moreover, there is a review on bills cleared at the Centralised Funds Management System, so we can’t clear bills if they failed to comply with norms.”