Govt issues another reminder directing submission of tour reports on outstation travels by officials

GANGTOK, 05 July: Outstation tours, including foreign tours, by State Government officials are a normal occurrence as part of official culture and practice; in fact, officials are required to go out of the State or even abroad to attend meetings, seminars, workshops etc quite often. However, rules prescribe that all government servants and officials, on their return from official tours, file a ‘tour report’ of their time and work when out of the state. Adherence to this particular norm has not been satisfactory; in fact, the non-compliance, rather lackadaisical, attitude of state government officials to the various norms regulating outstation travel has become more of the norm. 
This has led the state government to issue a directive regarding outstation travel for government employees. Some years ago as well the State government had issued a reminder to employees of the need to adhere to the norms regarding outstation travel but apparently there was not much change.
This time, there is an official directive issued by the Chief Secretary that henceforth all Chairpersons, Chairman, Secretaries/Head of Departments, Officers and employees of the State Government shall strictly adhere to the norms as and when they travel out of the State to attend any conferences, workshops or training programmes.
All such officials are to seek permission and approval of the competent authority mandatorily with all relevant details including agenda, venue, dates etc. Details are also to be provided regarding the programme content such as workshops, training programme, conferences etc. Finally and most importantly a tour report of the programme is to be submitted to the government on return of the officials. Heads of departments are to submit the tour reports to the Chief Secretary while Chairpersons will submit such reports to their respective Ministers. Other employees and officials are to submit it to their departmental heads.
Though there is no given time frame within which the report is to be submitted it should be within a reasonable time period. It has been noticed that officials usually forget about and submit such reports after a prolonged period.