Port Blair, Aug 05: The State President of Tunighata Peoples’ Movement of Human Rights Welfare Association, Andaman Branch, has demanded modification in the present transfer policy for posting various government officials in remote areas of Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
In a letter addressed to Mr. Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Mithun Das highlighted the problems faced by a govt. servant if he/she is posted to remote areas specially in the Nicobar group of islands, such as non-availability of quarters and posting for several years in the hard areas.
In most of the cases, the govt. servant tries to cancel the transfer order or go on medical leave, or on leave without salary.
These are genuine problems because the tenure of the transfer to hard areas or remote areas are not fixed and all government officials have the common fear that there is no guarantee that after the completion of the tenure they will be called back.
“There is also no guarantee that after the tenure is over, the government servant will not be sent to another hard area. Due to all these reasons both the Administration and the government servant face a number of court cases and other problems,” he said in his letter.
The TPM Human Rights suggested that to deal with this crisis, the Administration must review the entire transfer policy and reduce the tenure of hard area posting to only one year and withdraw the Transfer Allowance in case of short duration posting.
They have also suggested that every transfer order must carry the date of completion of the tenure so that every government servant can fearlessly and happily give his/her best output in the remote Islands for one year and come back.
Mr. Das added that the modification will benefit both the Administration and the government servant in many ways, for example, there will be no tension of allotment of quarters and no shortage of human resources due to leave and cancellation of transfer in the departments.
He added that the suggested modification in the transfer policy will not only provide relief to government servants but will also increase their job satisfaction and the productivity of all the departments.
