JOIN USFinally, police see hike in stationery
After a gap of nearly 14 years, the State government has increased the monthly stationery expenses for police stations across the State. Stationery includes papers, carbon papers, pens, pencils, files etc.
As per the government order issued dated July 29, 2009, police stations in the State have been classified into three categories - Urban, Town, and Rural police stations, and stationery expense has been fixed for each of these category. Those falling in urban areas will get Rs 3,000, Town Rs 2,500 and Rs 2,000 for those in Rural areas with immediate effect.
Hitherto all police stations used to get an uniform amount of Rs 1,000, as stationery expenses every month. There are a total of 881 police stations in the State. The amount towards stationery expense for police station was last revised in 1995. Policemen had a tough time maintaining records, especially over the last two three years, due to increase in prices of stationery. There are many instances wherein people were asked to get their own sheet of paper to lodge a complaint.
Or on many occasions policemen were forced to maintain different records like passport register, NB verification register and others in a single file. As per the rule, each one of these records has to be maintained in a different file, official sources said. “It isn’t that the government lacked resources to hike stationery expenses for so long, but it was purely due to negligence on the part of top officials of the department. From Rs 590 crore budget in 1998-99 for the Home Department, it has gone up to Rs 1,855 crore in 2009-10. But nobody bothered about a simple but most important thing like stationery expenses for so long,” officials pointed out.
The government’s decision in this regard has increased its expenditure by Rs 1.35 crore. In total, the government will be spending around Rs 2.50 crore towards stationery expenses.