PERIODIC TRANSFERS - SECTION OFFICERS
As any Dy. CAO/G knows, periodic transfers of section
officers are a delicate matter and have to be handled with care. More often than not orders issued get only
partially implemented. There is always,
at any given point of time, a situation in some unit or the other where a
certain section officer cannot be relieved because of some important work which
cannot be progressed without him/her. By and large, we the officers have to
take responsibility for making any section officer indispensable. Till the
other day I stood in the sidelines and watched the tamasha- and added my bit by
either not relieving a section officer or implementing a transfer order in
‘phases’ all with the sound approval of my boss. But at the back of my mind, I knew what I wanted and did not want
if and when I became Dy.CAO/G. Somehow
that happened and soon after there was a clamor to issue fresh transfer
orders. I mulled over it for about 3
months. I was determined that the officers should implement any order issued by
the administration. At the end of it,
one single order transferring 49 section officers was issued and within 10
days, all the units reported 100% compliance.
This is what I did. I want to
share this experience with all of you.
First of all I went to the FA&CAO and apprised him
that I intended to issue transfer orders.
I requested him to speak to all the FA&CAOs and request them to
ensure the orders are implemented. He
advised the FAs that their deputies would be consulted before orders are
issued. That reassured all the FA s and they readily agreed to leave the matter
to the deputies.
I laid down some parameters- not all categories are
‘sensitive’ and surprisingly, there are no clear cut instructions regarding
periodic transfer of officials in non-sensitive posts from one office to
another. There were and still are a
large number of staff who have been in the same office for 10 years or more.
I decided that the thumb rule would
be 5 years or more in the same office.
That way, there would be no whole sale disturbance of the office- after
all the deputy concerned had to get work done and show results too. So if I said 5 years and more and shifted
someone with 5 years and one month stay in an office and left an 8 year old for
another day, I did not see a problem.
The period decided, I called all the Deputies for a meeting. They were required to bring a list of
section officers who had completed 5 or more years in that office. They were also to know something of the
family background of the staff in the list- working wife, mother undergoing
medical treatment, child in crèche and so on- and also the place of residence
of the employee. Strict instructions
were given that their SAO’s or AAO’s or SO’s would NOT accompany them. The only exception was DY.CAO/G of
course!! SAO/ADMN would be with her
with a combined list of section officers fulfilling the above condition. At the outset I told all of them that to the
maximum extent possible the decisions taken in the meeting would be adhered
to. There may be a change or two, the
DY/G keeping the prerogative to make the change.
We met. I told
each deputy to mentally categorize a section officer as outstanding or very
good, indispensable, the sun and the moon without whom work cannot go on. We decided that in the first instance we
would shift 40-50% of the 5 or more years.
That way there would be some element of continuity. There would be an exchange of the section
officers on a one to one basis- an outstanding section officer from traffic
accounts would be sent to stores accounts in place of an outstanding section
officer who would be shifted from stores to say, construction accounts
etc. The assessment of the deputies
would be taken as such and not questioned.
Even in this one to one transfer, we made sure that people
were not dislocated in terms of their home commitments. Here in Chennai we have 3 streams of rail
traffic- we made sure that people coming from say Tambaram who had small kids
to send to school were not sent off to Perambur. At least not now. Maybe
later. So at worst, instead of
alighting at Egmore the person would get off at Park. Little things like that.
Physically challenged? Then send
to the other office which will not inconvenience him/her over much or the
deputy would ensure the person is posted in the ground floor or some similar
thing. It took us several hours to
arrive at a list found satisfactory by all present.
The SAO/ADMN, took down the names of the transferees, from
and to, on a real time basis. Three
hours after we dispersed the orders were ready to issue and that very evening
without much ado, the orders were issued.
That is important, one should not wait for 2 or 3 days- somehow people
find out and there would be unnecessary pressure- in this case not from any of
the FA&CAOs- but from the strangest imaginable quarters.
But of course on an individual level people did come and
represent and ask to be retained. I was
able to convince most of them that they really had no reason to make such a
request. One or two cases were
genuine. We are but human and not
all-knowing. But they agreed to join in
the new place and then ask for a request transfer.
What we did here on southern railway may not be something
new; maybe you already practice similar things on your railway. Why, Reena Ranjan my colleague here, tells
me that when she was on Western as Dy/G, while she did not call for a meeting,
she did speak to the deputy concerned on the phone and inform him or her of the
proposed move. This perhaps is just a
refinement of that.
Thought I should share this with all of you.
Manjula Rangarajan
Dy.CAO/G/SR
1983 Batch