Return
to Story Page
To print: Select File and then Print from your
browser's menu
Murali Gopalan
Mumbai, Sept 16: Foreign travel for directors of public sector units will now need approval of the minister (in the administrative ministry concerned) and not the chairman as has been the practice. The new rule will be implemented with immediate effect.
The department of public enterprises (DPE), in a recent notification to all PSU chiefs, has stated that this will be mandatory for both part-time and full time directors. Prior to this, only chairmen of PSUs would require the nod of their minister for overseas travel but this has been extended to include the directors also.
The DPE has indicated that a statement of the relevant foreign tours along with the official tour note/report of the officers should be placed before the board of directors in its periodical meetings. It has added that the ministry may, while scrutinising such proposals, "bear in mind the need to avoid unnecessary expenditure on such tours".
PSU sources have expressed their disappointment on the new ruling as it not only dilutes therole of the chairman but is a grim reminder that government inteference in daily functioning has only been on the rise. "All this talk about privatisation and greater autonomy is hypocritical as there is no way the public sector will be free of the clutches of government control," sources said.
The irony here is that the recent navratna status conferred on select PSUs was perceived as a sign of changing times. These boards of these companies were given the go-ahead to invest up to Rs 200 crore in any project without the hurdle of red-tapism. The outgo on foreign trips, on the other hand, would only cost the PSU concerned barely over Rs 50,000.
"While the objective of controlling needless expenditure is welcome, how will the minister concerned cope with the endless flow of applications for foreign travel? All this will only lead to further sycophancy and lobbying in Delhi. It will also weaken the relationship between the chairman and his board of directors as he will be seen as an individual whose powershave been stripped," experts say.
Reports doing the rounds in New Delhi suggest that some ministers have been particularly harsh in ensuring that select CEOs are denied the opportunity to travel abroad largely due to personal grouses. Typically, the new ruling will spawn a culture of mollycoddling and bending backwards to please the minister.
There is also no way to ensure that the heads of the ministries concerned will be around to okay requests for overseas travel. Their own political schedules take them trotting all over the country and sources say that this will cause needless shelving of tour plans simply because the minister was absent!
What has been particularly perplexing is that the government seems to be going all out to stifle a sense of autonomy in PSUs. It was only a couple of months ago that it decided to nominiate its own representatives on the boards of Petronet LNG and Petronet India, two entities which were created solely with the objective of being out of bureaucratic control. Thiswill hold good no longer and these companies will be no different from PSUs as regards daily functioning.
Experts say that such restrictions on travel will only affect the image of the country abroad. Turning down invitations to attend prestigious meets or skipping other events for want of a minister's approval will only send a signal of apathy and disinterest. In the not-so-long run, this could have its impact on foreign investment in crucial sectors.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
------------------------------------------------------------
This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
------------------------------------------------------------