well connectivity: Officials of animal husbandry department would soon be given GPS-enabled mobile phones so that their seniors can monitor them

Patna, April 13: To keep its officials on their toes, the animal husbandry and fisheries department has decided to provide 700 officials with mobiles enabled with global positioning system (GPS) facility.

“I realise that officials of my department do not have a proper working attitude. Many of them are very lazy. They do not report for fieldwork or find out the ground-level problems,” said Giriraj Singh, the animal husbandry and fisheries minister.

He added: “This has forced me to provide mobiles with GPS facility to 700 officials. The idea is to keep a tab on the officials and check if they are reporting for fieldwork or not.

“I have asked the officials on fieldwork duty to deal with various problems related to the department. I can now track their movement through the GPS facility. If they fail to report for duty, punitive action will be taken against them,” said Singh.

The minister also said: “I want all the officials to be updated about the developments in the department. But there have been complaints that they often write up the reports without doing the fieldwork. However, they will not be able to fool me now, as I will be able to track them will the help of the GPS.

“Excuses will not be tolerated. The department is going through all these expenses to ensure that efficiency is increased,” the minister said.

Sources said Singh had already taken action against the Muzaffarpur district animal husbandry officer for neglect in his duty.

“Before I became a minister of this department, people used to laugh at it. People thought this department was fraught with corruption. I want to erase this reputation from people’s minds. I want to prove that this department can do better than all other departments,” said Singh.

The department had been in the eye of the storm during the regime of former chief minister Lalu Prasad because of the infamous Rs 1,000 crore-fodder scam, in which the RJD chief himself was a prime accused.