Hyderabad: Official communications being sent from Hyderabad informing district administrations of the impending visit of ministers and legislators is sending revenue officials and staff into a tizzy.
This is because the government has not released “protocol charges” promptly to meet the expenses of tours and official programmes of ministers and legislators for three years. Officials and staff are forced to make their “own arrangements” for funds.
This is prompting corruption among revenue staff. Senior revenue- and mandal-level officers are giving their juniors the task of raising funds. They in turn are going after local businessmen, traders, commercial establishments and private educational institutions for money to pay for the programmes.
Traders and institutions are reluctantly donating funds fearing that refusal would entail “inspections”.
In some cases, officials and staff are demanding bribes from people who visit government offices to get their work done.
The menace has increased further since Dasara last year when 21 new districts were created. Multiple goverment programmes are being held every month in all the district headquarters.
The ministers and MLAs are taking up more tours of districts and constituencies after Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao began ordering surveys on the performance of MLAs.
With complaints about corruption and forcible collection of funds against revenue staff increasing, the government started an inquiry to find out the reasons.
Revenue officials and staff told Deputy CM and revenue minister Mohd Mahmood Ali that they were forced to collect money.
A revenue official said, “These days ministers are coming to the districts even for small programmes like launching road works, community halls andmarkets. When a minister comes, he is accompanied by at least 50 others, who include his security men, police bandobast, local leaders and his followers.”
The official said that if the programmes are held in the morning or evening, the staff has to pay Rs 10,000 for the shamiana chairs and snacks. “If they are held at noon, the expenditure will be Rs 20,000 as we need to arrange lunch. The government is not paying protocol charges. We are forced to look at other options,” he said.
The state government has allotted just Rs 20 lakh for 31 districts towards protocol charges but has not released the amount so far.
“Even if those funds are released, each district would get just Rs 60,000. Is this sufficient for entire year when we incur an average of Rs 10,000 expenditure for a single programme,” asked another official.
