ITANAGAR, 22 Apr: As many as 435 engineers are sitting for the departmental examination on ‘accounts’ and ‘laws of contract’, which is being held at the Nirman Bhavan here from 20-23 April.
The departmental examination is for engineers of works departments, the RD department and corporations and agencies with engineering wings under the state government.
“The task of conducting departmental accounts examination at the state level for service engineers in the rank of JE to EE, encompassing all engineering departments/corporation has been assigned to the APPWD in 2004 and since then, this has emerged as an annual calendar event,” PWD SE (Coordination) Dani Gamboo informed in a release.
“It is mandatory to pass the prescribed departmental examination within two years from date of appointment in the respective post. The annual increment of salary is stopped after two years when departmental examinations are not cleared,” he said.
“It is understood that in some departments, the annual increments are granted to those officers who have not cleared their departmental examination papers. In later stage of their service career, they have to part with heavy recovery from their salary running into lakhs of rupees,” Gamboo added.
“There are cases with level of current chief engineers who have not even cleared accounts papers for assistant engineers and got annual salary increment in their subsequent posts held. Thereafter they run into trouble when such cases are detected by the director of audit and pension during interim pay statement checking for pension purpose, resulting in recovery of excess pay drawn due to non-clearance of departmental examinations on time,” Gamboo said.
He said that some newly created departments in the state entrusted with engineering works and allied activities funded with state/central government resources are either not aware of this aspect or are not giving adequate importance to it. “This not only dilutes the quality of project delivery but also keeps the human resources with them away in matching up the financial and project management acumen of their colleagues from other engineering fraternity,” the SE said.
“In the absence of adequate trained accountants posted to each works division of all engineering department across the state, it is more important upon the engineers to acquire enough financial and account knowledge. The APPWD being the nodal agency therefore sincerely appeals to all such organizations to introduce this concept in their organization in the larger interest of the state and to enhance the capacity building of valuable human resources,” he said.
