The Hynñiewtrep Integrated Territorial Organization (HITO) submitted a memorandum to the Chief Secretary, Rebecca V Suchiang, calling for stricter control over the use of public vehicles, which the pressure group claims are being misused for private purposes, such as shopping trips and ferrying children to and from school.
“Precedent for this exists in other states and we feel it is only right and proper that official vehicles should be used only in the pursuit of official duties in Meghalaya as well,” HITO said. “It is incongruous that a state such as ours, where the government frequently makes use of the excuse that it does not have sufficient funds to pay teacher salaries or run an ambulance service on its own, can afford to waste precious public funds on the private use of government vehicles.”
Officials get away with this sort of behaviour because logbooks for public vehicles are not maintained by government drivers, it added.
“The maintenance of logbooks recording the movement of vehicles viz. date, time, place and purpose and periodic inspections of these logbooks will help keep a check on the misuse of said vehicles and we request you to issue a direction to this effect to all government departments,” the pressure group said.
Suchiang was told that it is acceptable for private use of official vehicles only if the officials pay for the privilege.
As department heads are responsible for the monitoring and upkeep of vehicles, to further ensure that vehicles are not misused they should have to pay 50% of the fuel expenses in case of a violation of government rules, the group added.
