THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) wants its temple staffers to quit their laid-back attitude and become more professional. Staffers have been asked to focus on increasing the revenue of temples like their counterparts in private temples, board president K Ananthagopan told TNIE. A continuous revenue monitoring and improvement system covering all the 1200-odd temples was launched recently. Under this, revenue loss due to dereliction of duty and carelessness of employees will be recovered from the person concerned.
The overall revenue from the temples is yet to return to the pre-Covid levels. “We are on the recovery path and employees’ cooperation is crucial to achieve the goal. Revenue increase is imperative as the salary and pension revision will be implemented in January 2023,” says Ananthagopan.
The monthly spending would go up by Rs 5 crore when the revision on the lines of the latest pay revision for government employees comes into effect. “Employees should behave in a devotee-friendly manner. They should be pleasant to visitors and serve them without delay. Devotees should be satisfied over the conduct of poojas. More professionalism on the part of employees will certainly help in revenue increase,” the president said. He warned strict action against staffers who conduct offerings without making entry in devaswom record.
The circular on the revenue monitoring system quotes an internal audit report that the revenue in many temples did not show a proportionate increase. It warns recovery from the administrative officer or sub-group officer for revenue loss due to lack of proportionate increase, dereliction of duty or carelessness.
The circular asks the administrative officer or sub-group officer, assistant devaswom commissioner and junior superintendent to constantly review the income of each temple, plug leakages and take steps for revenue increase. Absence of periodical increase should be reported to the superior office.
Assistant devaswom commissioners of each administrative group should send monthly revenue reports to deputy devaswom commissioners. The deputy commissioners should forward the report to the devaswom commissioner. The commissioner should submit his recommendations to the board.