HYDERABAD: Is the top brass of Secunderabad Cantonment Board painting a false picture that all is well at the cantonment to the Ministry of Defence? Residents of the eight civilian wards across SCB have alleged that the officials have failed to collect their feedback on several serious issues.
This after the MOD in August this year had issued orders to the Director General Defence Estates and Chief Executive Officers of all 62 cantonments across the country, including SCB, that they must submit a monthly report on issues of civilians and performance appraisal of officials. This report was also to have a critical element of feedback collected from the cantonment civilians.
Speaking to Express, spokesperson for Open Secunderabad Cantonment All Roads (OSCAR), S Chandrasekhar said, “SCB officials have failed to resolve the long pending issues faced by civilians in the cantonment.” He alleged that SCB officials wouldn’t bother about implementation of these Ministry of Orders(MOD) as well.
However, SCB’S elected members say that the new expert committee is looking into all the grievances directly. “The primary issue is that majority of the employees have turned apathetic and lethargic having served in the same position for years,” said an elected member, not wishing to be named. Adding to this he said, most cantonments wanted a change in this transfer policy. “With that, the Ministry of Defence(MOD) has constituted an expert panel consisting of seven senior defence officials to resolve complaints related to all 62 cantonments in the country with all stakeholders,” he added.
“We now write to the expert committee on their ID Committee-cb@gov.in, about the various issues like road closure,” Chandrashekhar, a citizen told Express. When contacted, SCB vice-president, J Ramakrishna, said that “We are requesting the expert committee to visit the SCB to resolve the pending issues.”