Jammu Mayor leads delegation to CS, resents non-cooperative attitude of senior bureaucrat

Pension, ration card bifurcation among others issues raised by Sharma

STATE TIMES NEWS

JAMMU: Jammu Mayor, Rajinder Sharma along with 25 Councillors of Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC), all from BJP, on Friday met Chief Secretary of Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta and informed the top bureaucrat that senior bureaucrat never attends to the phone calls of elected public representatives while other bureaucrats do it very well.
“Whom will he respond then if he doesn’t respond to elected representatives of public in a democracy,” the Mayor expressed resentment.
The JMC delegation of elected representatives also raised the issue of pensions and ration card bifurcations.
“For getting pension from the Social welfare Department income certificate is essentially needed and it is produced showing Rs. 3000 as income while practically income of the pension seeker remains zero,” Mayor Rajinder Sharma said adding, “This on one side erodes the credibility of the authority issuing such certificates and on the other the integrity of person getting such certificate remains doubtful.”
He also said that in nuclear families today old parents are not cared by the children and ration cards have names of parents and children together.
“Children earn and give nothing to their old parents and if the parents want pension they need PHH ration card and the one they have can’t be bifurcated for that as the bifurcation is stopped,” he informed.
Sharma further said that for one over 60 year of age there should be no need of PHH category as one who is seeking Rs 1000 pension clearly be having a meager income.
“For widow pension PHH ration card is needed while anyone can be widow. If someone in lower middle class family gets widowed she would not be eligible for pension for lack of PHH ration card with her. So this category must not be linked with pension cases,” the Mayor continued.
He also informed that income slab in ration cards is mostly written wrongly and people are facing problem due to this.
“JMC should be given a platoon of 36 sleuths of Security Forces (SFs) to maintain secrecy in operations as presently for operations SSP is contacted for force and the secrecy is not maintained,” Rajinder Sharma said.
He also said that election of Ward Committees should be done as per 74th Amendment, under which on every 2000 people one representative is elected.
“Chief Electoral Officer J&K should be written for this,” Sharma added.
He said, as the rainy season is coming and some Nallahs are to be repaired in emergency and money is not there for that but Rs. 88 crore are there with JMC under Grant In Aid (non-planned) and this money should be allowed to be used by JMC.
The Mayor said that Health Centres and Primary Schools given to JMC should be completely handed over to the urban local body so that Public Clinics could be opened there.
He said that executive engineers of JMC are not having drawing and disbursing powers due to which unnecessary and over burdening of JMC commissioner and chief accounts officer remains there while in other departments drawing and disbursement powers are with executive engineers and they also clear bills of contractors and in JMC same is done by the Commissioner.
“If the Commissioner clears bills worth Rs. one crore daily how can he be able to do other works of the local body,” Sharma asked demanding the drawing and disbursing powers be given to the executive engineers.
He further said that in AMRUT-2, money should be released as early as possible so that the much needed 26 tube wells might be dug as soon as possible so that the public may face no problem in coming summers.
The Mayor also raised the issue of non-highlighting of tourism related events and places of Jammu on the social media platforms of J&K Tourism Department as passwords for the social media handles for that has not been given to those concerned in Jammu region.
“Due to this people from other parts of the country and world are unable to see tourism related developments in Jammu,” the Mayor rued.
The Chief Secretary assured the delegation that all the issues raised shall be looked into seriously for solutions.