CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Women and Children Development and Welfare Corporation (Punwac) is on the brink of financial collapse, thanks to rank inefficiency, rampant corruption and gross mismanagement.
Meanwhile, crores of rupees are spent on security forces to oppress the people of the Punjab which they pay from their own taxes.
Set up in 1979 with the objective of helping needy women and children with a paid up capital of Rs 5 crores, the corporation has been suffering losses year and after year with certain top officials siphoning off lakhs of rupees. The corporation is now left with a share capital of just 40 lakh. The total losses incurred by it during 199192 alone were to the tune of Rs 78 lakh.
The Punjab Government has drawn up a plan to wind up lossmaking units and there is every chance that the axe will fall on Punwac as well. But the employees of the corporation, in a memorandum addressed to the Minister for Social Welfare, Brahm Mohindra, have urged him to probe the causes of the heavy losses, fix responsibility an take action against the guilty, especially those officials who have been feathering their own nests while the corporation was sinking deeper into the red,
Mohindra is understood to have taken serious notice of the goings on in the corporation and indicated that he was for a thorough probe and a complete overhaul of the Corporation in a bid to save it from closure. He has also discussed the matter with the Chief Minister, Beant Singh.
The latest scandal to hit the ailing corporation concerns the supply of “substandard” woolen jersey and socks to the Punjab police. An enquiry conducted by the previous managing director of the corporation, Kalpana Mittal Barua, on a complaint forwarded by the police chief, K.P.S. Gill, held that not only were the jerseys and socks substandard, but these were made from outside and about Rs 2 lakh was falsely claimed as wages for peace rate workers by certain officials of the knitting center at Ludhiana. The raw material consumed was also shown far in excess of what was actually used. She, therefore recommended immediate transfer of Rapinderjit Singh, project officer at Ludhiana, and serving of charge-sheets on three others including Lakhbir Singh Syal, Pritam Kaur and Kulwant Singh,
Immediately after she submitted the report, she was unceremoniously shifted from the corporation and another officer, during whose tenure a lot of irregularities had allegedly taken place earlier, brought back as managing director, Employees allege that efforts are now on to hush up the matter.
Another scandal relates to the execution of the manufacturing and corporation quota from the Textile Commissioner, Bombay, for export of ready-made garments made in Punwac units. Over the past years, the practice has been to sell the quota to a few favorite exporters in Delhi and pocket the commission. The corporation has now has nearly Rs. 93 lakh blocked with a foreign buyer, who claims the goods sent to him by the exporter were damaged in transit.
The corporation’s stitching center at Chandigarh is another drain on its resources. It has only five workers whose work is being supervised by 20 members of the staff with a fat salary bill.
It is also suffering from gross overstaffing. The total staff strength is 450, including 150 at it head office in Chandigarh. Most of the employees have been recruited by successive managing directors without inviting applications through newspapers or from employment exchanges. The standard ploy is to appoint a person on and hoc basis and regularize him later.
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