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Jammu and Kashmir: 2 months on, govt employees decry monthly performance monitoring system
Two months after employees performance monitoring portal was launched to assess monthly performance of all government servants in Jammu and Kashmir, staffers have expressed resentment towards its “lack of accountability and transparency”
Two months after the employees performance monitoring (EPM) portal was launched to assess the monthly performance of all government servants in Jammu and Kashmir, the staffers have expressed resentment towards its “lack of accountability and transparency”.
Under the new policy, the government employees in UT will have to file monthly performance reports on the EPM portal which will be graded by their immediate bosses, apart from the annual performance report (APR). Their work will then be graded between 0 and 10 (lowest to highest).
The employees say that the policy is arbitrary and subjective, with no accountability and oversight of the grading officers. Besides, they say the portal has a particular format to fill in the details, which does not take into account the diversity and categories of employees. “Everybody is disgusted and concerned over this policy as it is full of flaws. If the government is really serious, then they have to make the process transparent ” said Rafiq Rather, president of the Employees Joint Action Committee.
The portal was launched by chief secretary Arun Kumar Mehta on February 5 and the government had said that the monthly reporting system is likely to bring about “much needed accountability and service efficiency”.
Mehta had called the initiative path breaking in taking the good governance practices a notch higher in the UT.
However, the employees feel that the first casualty of the new system was accountability.
“Under the present system, an employee’s grade depends completely on the mood of the immediate boss and there is no accountability. We have no recourse to challenge their decision,” Rather said. He added that there should be a mechanism to ascertain on what basis they have been graded.
“Whether my boss is grading me fairly or involving his whims and fancies, it should be known. He can grade me unfairly low because I don’t keep him in good humour or vice versa,” he said.
Naseer Ahmad Khan, assistant professor of English at a degree college of north Kashmir, said that he became the victim of an “unprofessional” boss in the very first month of the performance appraisal.
“My boss used it as a weapon against me and granted me grade zero. It was just to tarnish me. The parameter can and has been misused,” Khan said.
“I had taken the highest number of classes, was regular and punctual, had completed a refresher course in the same month and was a superintendent of an examination centre. But, my boss says he doesn’t agree,” he said.
Khan said that his boss’s conduct could be because he didn’t agree with many of his ethical habits. “It happened without any logic and reason and if it happens consistently, it is a very scary situation for all the employees. There is an alarm among the employees as there is no check and balance. There is no objectivity,” he said.
Rather said that they have apprehensions that any employee getting a low score unfairly will be targeted by the government under the new policy, whereby they retire people voluntarily with 22 years of service or 48 years of age.
He said that the format also should be employee friendly and different for different categories. “There can’t be a uniform format for every type of employee. A teacher’s performance is class work and results while a bureaucrat’s work is dealing with files. There are employees who work in the field and then there are class IV employees who know nothing about performance review,” he said.
Chief secretary Arun Kumar Mehta could not be reached over phone as his staff said he was in a meeting. Manoj Kumar Dwivedi, principal secretary, general administration department and Atal Dulloo, financial commissioner and additional chief secretary, did not respond to calls either.
