The ‘leadership vacuum’ and officials with lower educational qualifications on the decision making tiers of the management of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) have been adding to the woes of the loss-making organisation.
An RTI response on the educational qualifications of senior officials shows that most of them are not well qualified and some of the critical administrative posts have been remaining unoccupied for long. The recently chalked out revival package by the Corporation to save it from the recent crisis also points out this issue.
Addressing the major human resources issues the Corporation faces, it was said in the revival package that “the Executive Directors are not well qualified. Out of the five Executive Directors, three are not even graduates and one has only passed SSLC. The leadership vacuum in critical positions makes it difficult to introduce reforms.”
“The Corporation which has an income of around Rs 1700 crore and expenses of around Rs 2700 crore does not have a Chartered Accountant. This should also be addressed,” the package points out.
Responding to an RTI query, the State Public Information Officer at the Chief Office here said that a regulation to decide job qualifications was under the government’s consideration. The post of General Manager has also been lying vacant.
The RTI response shows that two of the Executive Directors who are just below the Chairman and the Managing Director hierarchically are not graduates. The ED (Operations) has only passed SSLC and ED (Technical) has passed SSLC and a diploma in Automobile Engineering. EDO is in in-charge of supervising all the operational activities of the KSRTC. EDT has the responsibility of all the technical aspects from buying buses, body building, and maintenance works.
The post of senior programmer, who was supposed to be the head of the Electronic Data Processing Centre (EDPC), the Computer Centre of KSRTC, had been remaining vacant for the past one year.
Instead, the additional charges of EDPC has been given to ED (Administration) and Accounts Manager. The required qualification for this post is either B Tech, MCA or PG Diploma in Computer Applications. The qualifications of the current Accounts Manager is BA, LLB, LLM, MBA and diploma in IT.
The issue was raised up earlier during various meetings and found place in the minutes also. Yet, the Corporation failed to take any action and institute an efficient mechanism to assess their human resource.
However, it is in this scenario that news about 13 per cent hike in DA for the senior officials of the Corporation appeared in the newspapers. The Corporation currently has a resource gap of Rs 90 crore per month along with a loan liability of Rs 2,000 crore and pension dues. The action had invited large criticism from employee unions and pensioners’ associations.
Deccan Herald
