DIMAPUR, OCTOBER 31 : In the eleven-month period from November, 2015 to October this year, the Nagaland State Vigilance Commission has recovered a whopping Rs 1,27,28,030 (One crore Twenty-seven lakh Twenty-eight thousand and thirty rupees) “from investigations” and got 49 employees of the state government terminated from service for various corruption offences.
In the same period, 11 more employees of the state government were penalised “with stoppage of increment” and 8 others served with administrative warnings. According to a data made exclusively available to Eastern Mirror, the state Vigilance Commission also disposed off 36 cases during the same period.
The Commission also recovered two one-year old Scorpio SUVs, and served warnings to the Finance as well as the Rural Development departments during the period. (See table on page 5)
The figures presented have come despite the Commission functioning under various constraints. According to the Director and DIGP of Nagaland State Vigilance Commission, I Meyionen, the agency suffers from three “constraints” mainly.
“The first is fund constraint. Then there is mobility constraint. Thirdly, we have manpower constraint,” he told an audience mostly of students gathered to observe Vigilance Awareness Week 2016 at Town Hall, Dimapur on Monday.
According to him, there are only 13 officers in the Commission with the authority to conduct investigations. He said that it was impossible to cover the entire state with only 13 investigating officers. With the agency centred at Kohima, he said, most of the offices end up on tours to other districts for 3 weeks in a month.
By simply saying no
“We must remember that however much the corrupt insist on corruption, it can be rooted out by the public saying: no,” said K T Sukhalu, the Vigilance Commissioner of Nagaland in his keynote address. The event was observed on the theme: Public participation in promoting integrity and eradicating corruption.
Many evils, he reminded, could be ended simply by the (people’s) ability to say no. According to Sukhalu, corruption in Nagaland starts with election money. “If you have money, you can win any election here.
“Any criminal can win his case if he has money. People have started losing faith in democracy. You can create news if you have money. Media has, to an extent lost its sense and has become sensational,” he said.
While appreciating the NBCC’s call for clean elections, Sukhalu said that the church however should “introspect” on the source of its funds. “Church leaders should not make money collection their priority and without a concern for the source of the funds.”
He also said that the fight against corruption could not be won without the citizens’ support, participation and vigilance. “The youth can do a great deal in this matter but we must be careful not to take up misguided ideals and ideas because it is going to have the opposite impact.
“The main problem of the youth is that they are not a part of the society in its full sense since they come under parents, and are guided by parties, and ad old ideals that has no relevance in today’s IT age. Youths need to take up politics, to give new dimensions, give relevance and must provide what the society really needs,” he said.
Five speakers – T Bangerloba, president of Naga Council Dimapur; Hukheli T Wotsa, president of Naga Women Hoho Dimapur; Sungkum Aier, president of Dimapur Naga Students’ Union and Kesonyu Yhome, deputy commissioner of Dimapur – shared their views on the theme of the occasion. It was followed by an interactive session, and administration of pledge.
