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J&K Prisons Deptt facing acute shortage of staff

Pallavi Sareen. Dated: 7/16/2018 9:19:41 AM

JAMMU, June 15: Jammu and Kashmir Prison Department is facing huge scarcity of man power and infrastructure to manage the jails of the state.
While the state government has been mooting plans to construct jails reformation centres for the convicts, the report of the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) pointing out the inadequacies of the prison department is a shocking comment on the existing ground situation. The report shows the lack of adequate manpower in jails across Jammu and Kashmir.
Only 9 posts have been filled out of the 17 sanctioned posts of Prison officials as in DG/Additional DG/ Additional IG/DIG/Superintendent. The posts of Additional DG and Additional IG have been lying vacant for a long time and the NCRB report maintains that the police officers do not prefer getting posted in the department of Jails. They consider it a punishment as against postings in Crime, CID and Police Department. The recent pattern of posting in the Department of Jails also shows that the state government appoints senior-most or retiring police officers for the post of DG Prisons.
Department of Jails has 35 posts of DSPs/Deputy Jailors/Jailors/Assistant Jailors; of these 10 are vacant. Sources point out that one reason for shortage of manpower is the entanglement in litigations regarding the posts of warders.
Officials accept that it is the duty of those heading the department to ensure that officials and other staff members are available in requisite numbers to ensure both safety and security of the inmates along with fulfilling the agenda of reformation.
What makes the matters worse is the fact that even these officials who are working in the Department of Jails are facing innumerable problems.
Of the many problems, one of the major concern of these officials is the extreme shortage of staff quarters for both the executive as well as ministerial cadre. 32 officers of the executive care have been allotted 34 residential quarters while the staff of the executive cadre whose number is 663 has been assigned 173 residential quarters. A simple analysis of the figures indicates that the number of residential quarters is 3 times lesser than the number of staff members in the executive care.
More appalling is the condition of the ministerial cadre. There are 63 staff members in the ministerial cadre. State government has provided them 4 residential quarters. These four residential quarters are allotted to the blessed ones, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.
Home department is yet to provide residential accommodation to the two officers of the ministerial cadre working in the department of Jails. No residential quarter has been allotted to them.
State government had recently proposed to construct more Jails but without laying out any framework for providing the existing ones with requisite manpower and infrastructure.
DG (Prisons) Dilbagh Singh commented, “The primary reason for these vacancies is that there has been no new recruitment. The people got retired but there were no new recruitments. We are trying that the recruitment process gets initiated soon.”
He further said, “I do not know anything about the residential issues. Here accommodation is adequately available.”