By: Ibni Maqbool
Srinagar: Despite the cabinet approval, the Community Information Centre (CIC) operators working in Jammu and Kashmir are running from pillar to post for the past seven years for regularization of their services.
As many as 172 CIC operators were appointed by the government in 2004 for handling online portals and e-governance related matters of the Rural Development Department (RDD).
The appointments were made by district-level committees headed by respective deputy commissioners.
Documents accessed by The Precious Kashmir reveal that the state cabinet in 2014 approved a proposal for formulation of a policy for regularization of CIC operators.
As a follow-up to its earlier decision, the cabinet in 2016 created 172 posts of data entry operators for regularization of services of CIC operators.
Later in 2017, an empowered committee headed by Principal Secretary, Finance department approved regularization of their services and communicated its recommendations to the Rural Development department for issuing their regularization orders as data entry operators.
The Law department and Advocate General also gave green signal to the proposal after file was submitted to them for legal opinion.
The Finance department also reiterated its earlier concurrence to the proposal when the file was re-submitted to it.
However, on June 3 this year, the General Administration Department advised the Rural Development department to put the case of 172 CIC operators before the establishment-cum-selection committee of J&K government.
“The process will take years altogether and almost all the incumbents have crossed the age of 45 years and above; 172 posts data entry operators were created by GAD in 2016 and also the cases were cleared by the empowered committee of Jammu & Kashmir Government in 2017,” read an open letter written by CIC operators to LG Manoj Sinha.
They have urged the LG to kindly intervene in the matter and issue necessary instructions for their regularization.
“It is further requested to your excellency to order enhancement of salary of CIC operators with immediate effect as an interim relief,” reads the letter.
