Jharkhand treasuries go online, in for transparency

Ranchi: Officials and employees of the Jharkhand government would soon be getting updates of financial transactions with the state treasuries on their mobiles.

The state Information Technology (IT) Department has planned this initiative after successful inter-linking of all 31 treasuries and sub-treasuries across the state through high-bandwidth data connectivity.

Department officials said that the mechanism would also allow the government staff avoid frequent visits to the treasuries for gratuity provident fund related transactions, as it would be available online.

With this, Jharkhand has joined the club of a few states, which have adopted the mode of e-Governance to insist on greater transparency in financial transactions.

Conduct of treasuries in this region of erstwhile Bihar had suffered a serious blow when the infamous Rs 950 crore scam, involving the Animal Husbandry Department, broke out some 10 years ago.

The move, a joint initiative of the state Finance Department and the IT Department, will not only cut substantial time usually spend on physical transfer of data from treasuries to banks and then to the Finance Department, but also help the state government save recurring expenses of Rs 10 lakh per annum on stationeries.

State Finance Commissioner Rajbala Verma said that each and every transaction from treasuries could be tracked and verified at any time.

"Besides, the new mechanism will allow treasuries to prepare statements in a few hours, which usually took months of exercise. Now, we could send the monthly statement of treasuries to the Accountant General by 5th of the next month," she said.

Citing about one more important feature of the system, IT Secretary RS Sharma said that the officials could do away with signing at least seven places on the pay bill.

"Instead of putting seven signatures, they require doing just one signature on an A4 size paper and every thing would be OK for payment," Sharma added.

The system is also equipped with facility to keep records about advances and payments taken or made by the officials and employees.

"This being a hectic exercise, the department was unable to realise the advances from the officials," Verma said.