NACEN –Custom's Premier Academy not able to spend money allotted to it
You think Government Departments are white elephants constantly engaged in wasting your money? The fact is many of the Departments do not know how to spend the money given to them.
Look at NACEN – National Academy of Customs Excise and Narcotics, the premier Academy which is considered to be a centre of excellence. As if the money allotted to it was not enough, it got sanctioned an additional amount of Rs. 2.15 Crores, but at the end of the year, it had an unspent amount of Rs. 5.17 Crores. The Academy could not spend even the Rs. 3 Crores it had as surplus and it got an additional grant of over Rs. 2 Crores.
The Directorate of Publicity and Public Relations (Customs and Central Excise) got Rs. 26.41 Crores out of which they could only spend Rs. 8.37 Crores leaving an unspent amount of Rs. 18.04 Crores. We in TIOL have given them a lot of free publicity – How I wish they could have given us some ads out of the money they could not spend.
The Customs and Central Excise Department had a hundred Crores for Preventive and other functions out of which they could spend only Rs. 27.42 Crores leaving an unspent amount of Rs. 72.58 Crores.
They were given Rs. 15 Crores for buying Ready Built Flats, out of which they could only spend a paltry 2.62 Crores. Totally the Indirect Taxes department was not able to spend Rs. 113.42 Crores given to it. Just imagine the change it would have brought in had this money been spent.
All this information is from the latest report of the CAG to the President – the first Report for the year 2009.
You go to any Customs or Central Excise office in the country – you find the senior officers have swanky air-conditioned rooms, some of which are more posh than the room of the Finance Minister. Every time a Commissioner or Chief Commissioner joins, everything from carpet to computer is changed. We were told that recently a Commissioner re-decorated his room at a cost of nearly Rs 5 Lakhs ! – You go to this Commissionerate – there is no place for visitors to sit, no drinking water facility – of course there is a tap, but no tumbler. The other day I saw a retired Member of the CBEC sweating outside a Commissioner's room.
And they have no money to subscribe to ELT or TIOL which would actually help them win cases and increase their Revenue. The cost for this would be peanuts compared to the money they spend lavishly to project an image before the public that they are not servants of the citizens but princes who are there to enjoy the good things of life, with hardly any responsibility.
The Department was not able to spend Rs. 113.42 Crores! With half that money they could have provided a laptop, cell phone and internet connection to all the officers from Inspector and above with subscription to ELT and TIOL and the results would have been amazing.
The other day, an assessee told DDT that he went to file the service tax returns and found nearly 14 to 15 officers sitting in cramped office space of less than 400 sft and there was no place to move for the number of assessees who came to file the returns including ladies who had to jostle through the little space to reach thier officer. When so much of funds are available, why can't they spend it on such essential requirements?
NACEN could not spend Rs. 5 Crores – with half that money they could have provided the best training. Even I have lost in that non-spending. They used to invite me to give lectures, but of late they seem to have blacklisted me.