Month on, files dumped in corridor of mini sectt

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, December 25

The shifting of the office of the District Employment Generation and Training Officer (DEGTO) in Faridkot has led to the blockage of corridors on the first floor of the mini secretariat here.

Thousands of important official files have been dumped in the corridor to create space for the DEGTO office.

These files are strewn all over the corridor in a very bad condition. This dumping of files in the corridor has blocked the passage of the public to various offices in the mini secretariat.

The majority of the files belong to the District Development and Panchayat Office (DDPO). The DDPO and some other departments were using a room for storing files, but now, the room has been allotted to DEGTO after the latter’’s office was shifted from the Zila Parishad building to the mini-secretariat. And for the past month, these records are lying unclaimed in the corridor.

Not willing to spell out the reason for this ‘’dumping’’ of the department record, Baljit Kaur, District Development and Panchayat Officer in Faridkot, said that she had joined the department some days earlier. “However, my department has already collected all our important and relevant files,” she claimed.

Throwing the official record in the corridor this way is a violation of the Record Retention Schedule, said Mangat Arora, an advocate here.

As record management is viewed as key to efficient administration and a critical activity of government departments, it is better if the departments mark all unnecessary records for weeding out and destroy it as per rules, said Arora.