Following a slew of complaints from the teachers and the employees of Education Department regarding malfunctioning of District Education Office (Secondary) here, Harish Rai Dhanda, Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Punjab, decided to take the bull by its horns as he landed at the DEO office in the morning today. Dhanda reached there around 10 am and monitored the office working in the presence of employees and officers.

Later, talking to Newsline, Dhanda said, “I got complaints about improper working here from different sources. Teachers’ union also gave a memorandum about it. There is lot of administrative work at DEO office like clearing of ACP cases, medical reimbursement cases etc. A lot of files related to these case have been lying pending. I gave the concerned staff a deadline of 15 days to clear these files.”

He said that although it was not his job yet he had to do. He said, “None of the higher officers of education department came forward for solving these issues. Being a local representative, I decided to solve them. As far as ACP cases are concerned, I was told that many school heads did not know how to remove objections. The problem arose because in many schools there were no regular heads and principals.

I advised the DEO to train cluster heads first, who will further train the remaining school heads and principals. About medical reimbursement cases, I found that there is lot of paper work involved in these. The files keep shuttling from one education department to civil surgeon office and then to the secretary education. I feel there is need to decentralize it. About this, I will talk to the secretary education.”

It needs to be mentioned here that there has been a lot of bickering in the District Education Office (Secondary) ever since Sudesh Bajaj joined here as DEO. To resolve all this, Dhanda held a meeting of all the employees and the officers and asked the DEO (Sec) to give a patient hearing to her subordinates and then redress their grievances. Dhanda also spoke about the alleged irregularities committed in the office as this was one of the issues raised by many teachers’ unions.

Dhanda said, “About this, Sudesh Bajaj said that many a time she has to visit schools for inspection, attend meetings of officers and sometimes have to prepare some confidential information. So she remains away from the office during these assignments.”

Discussing about the memorandum of teachers’ union which want action against DEO for appointing people of her choice on examination duties, he said, “Being a rational person I did not find any mistake on her part. As per the DEO, she deputed the teachers of her choice only when the deputed ones did not report on the examination duty. She said that she had to prepare the list in advance to cover the risk.”

However, Dhanda said that he would soon hold a meeting with officers of Punjab School Education Board and ask them why they did not prepare an extra list of examination staff to meet emergencies. This would be helpful in deputing another teacher in case the teacher listed in first list was unable to joining the examination duty.