Salary of staff of 19 depts 'withheld' for not entering data on portal

Ravinder Saini

Rohtak, December 27

Taking a serious view of “non-compliance” of directives, the Department of Finance has withheld the salary (for December that is to be paid in January) of employees of 19 government departments on failing to enter correct data related to sanctioned and vacant posts of their office concerned on the e-post module.

Pay disbursed, claims official

We have already completed the data of our division in the HRMS portal and the salary of none of the employees at our office has been withheld. — Sanjeev Verma, Divisional Commissioner, Rohtak

Sources said the employees were warned of the action by issuing a circular in this regard on November 2 in which the Finance Department had directed them to complete the exercise by November 9 otherwise it would be constrained to stop the salary of DDOs/head of department concerned but officials of 19 departments failed to comply with the directives.

As per a communiqué issued by the office of Additional Chief Secretary (Finance Department), the departments include land record, sports and youth welfare, police, prosecution, gurudwara election, State Information Commission Haryana, health, advocate general, development and panchayat, family welfare, elementary education, secondary education, technical education and Divisional Commissioner in Ambala, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Hisar, Karnal and Rohtak.

“It is observed that despite the number of chances and repeated reminders given since June 2022 to freeze the post on e-post module, a number of departments have failed to complete the exercise so far. So it has been decided to withhold the salary for December 2022 of all employees, including HoD, of 19 departments whose performance is less than 80 per cent in respect of freezing of e-Post data on e-Post module till date,” states the communiqué.

Sources said, “The Chief Minister had, some months ago, reviewed sanctioned posts in the e-posting and HRMS portals and it was found that many departments had entered incorrect data, including of diminishing cadre, resulting into mismatch of data between e-posting module and the HRMS related to total sanctioned strength of a department including of field offices.”

Thereafter on June 8, the Finance Department decided to defreeze the e-post data of all departments to carry out corrections by the head of all departments. User ID/password was shared to the HoD during the implementation of e-posts and they were asked to check and enter correct data related to sanctioned strength of their department concerned by September 14, said the sources.

“However, 38 departments and Divisional Commissioners of Ambala, Gurugram, Hisar, Karnal, Rohtak and Faridabad at that time failed to reconcile the data with expenditure concerned controlling branches despite the reminders and extension of the time period. Thereafter, the Finance Department gave last opportunity to all these departments and Divisional Commissioners to complete the exercise till November 9 but 19 of them again failed to adhere to the directives leading to the action,” the sources added.