New DG NACEN - Post an Officer having Aptitude and who will stay in Faridabad - IRS Association
THE IRS (Customs and Central Excise) Association has in a letter to the CBEC Chairperson requested her to post as DG, NACEN an officer having aptitude for training and willing to stay on the Faridabad Campus.
NACEN is without a DG now after the retirement of RashedaHussain last month. The Board is likely to issue a promotion order appointing nearly 25 new Chief Commissioners, any day now and one of the Chief Commissioners will definitely be posted as DG, NACEN. It is at this juncture that Metta Rama Rao President of the IRS Association has made the request to the CBEC Chairperson.
It is nice to see an officers association asking for improving the premier academy of the Department and not for facilities for the officers.
He rightly says, "apart from number of officers trained, the Quality of training has to be considered important. The quality of training of IRS (C&CE) Probationers at NACEN, Faridabad vis-à-vis other services at CTIs like NPA, LABASNAA, NADT, etc needs to be compared in order to stay ourselves ahead and relevant in changing times. Apart from imparting knowledge, the Probationers should be given training in skills like inter-personal relations, peer relations, relations with superiors, and working as teams. They should be mentored with proper values and attitudes. For this to happen NACEN faculty has to interact with small groups of Probationers throughout the period of training. This cannot happen until all faculty stay within the NACEN Campus. Further Probationers from time to time have been complaining about the facilities in the Hostel and Campus and are dissatisfied with them as they come across better facilities in other CTIs. If faculty stays on the campus, the Probationers/Trainees will get better facilities. The faculty can also nudge them to productively use their time on week-ends."
He has really hit the nail on the head. NACEN is in Faridabad and right from DG to sepoy, most of the faculty and staff operate from Delhi and usually nobody reaches Faridabad before 1130 am. Perhaps NACEN is the only residential academy in the world having the head and faculty members commuting from another city. What role models are they for the probationers? The first lessons they learn in the academy are that, you need not come to office on time; you don't need to stay in the station where you are posted - and these are the future leaders of the Department!
The Association in its letter says that it strongly believes that NACEN should be the most important Institution in our Department as it is here all the young recruits (IRS or others) learn right things and the not-so young crave to go back to unlearn wrong things and relearn right things.
How right they are!
If an engineer fails, a bridge may collapse; if a doctor fails, a patient may collapse, but if a teacher fails, a whole generation collapses!