Ricoh was the contractor, Ricoh scanning work has been stopped
Wadgaon-Mawad: How can workers work without receiving timely paid wages? How can the work-target be achieved with less man power and intermittent power cut? This is the scenario of record-room and scanning-cell in the Mawad tahsil office, here, in the collectorate premises. Since the employees have not received their wages for past four months, they have stopped working since last Friday in protest against the administration.
It may be mentioned here that the functioning of record-scanning cell has been at snail’s pace since the scanning machine is deficient, there is shortage of man power and no alternate arrangement of power supply to the machine, and as a result the work of scanning and meta-data entry gets often interrupted. On the other hand, citizens to observed these problems and came forward demanding systematization of the functioning of scanning-cell in their interest. They also demanded that the outstanding of wages of the employees be released in order to infuse in them the spirit to work.
According to sources, the revenue department maintains the record of different works, like, 7/12 documentation, birth-death certification, land records, maps, plans, field-book, various forms and formats, survey records and block-wise maps, etc, in all 11 lakh records of such types, all online. This system was launched on December 31, 2014 in the tahsil office to expedite the work.
When this online system was started, 3 months were allotted for updated scanning of records, 2 months for meta-data entries, in all five-month-period was given to complete the work. But, by 11 June 2015, only 60% scanning has been done and 40% work is still lacking completion. The scanning and meta-data entry work has been assigned to a private contractor company, Rico, and there have been 3 scanning machines provided with 6 persons to work. As the machines and man-power is deficient in proportion to the quantity of work, and in addition to it there is no alternate power supply, the scanning work is held up.
Moreover, as regular wages have never been paid to the employees, many of them have left their job, and instead, new workers at low wages have been employed. New workers are not well trained, and they too do not receive their timely payments. For an instance, the workers have not received their wages since February 2015, as disclosed by the workers themselves. All these factors are responsible for dissatisfactory functioning of the scanning-record-cell.
When contacted Tahsildar Sharad Patil on this count, his reply was that the contractor running the entire affair has been repeatedly warned to expedite the pending work, and now suitable action needs to be taken against him.
