Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, MAY 19
Acute shortage of manpower continues to afflict the state’s much maligned department of Excise, despite its status as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, machineries of the state government with a history that dates back to the days of the British Raj.
Regardless of such history, and a herculean task of enforcing the dry law since 1989, the state’s Excise department today has only 264 armed personnel, with 231 of them in the constable rank. With this ‘strength’ Nagaland pretends to wage war on illegal liquor, drugs and other intoxicative substances.
On Tuesday, the newly assigned parliamentary secretary of Excise, BS Nganglang was briefed of this anomaly, along with others, by the commissioner of Excise, Maongwati Aier here in Dimapur. With the establishment of Excise offices in all of the eleven districts, six sub-divisional offices and four check posts, the department is unable to provide minimum required strength in each of the offices, the parliamentary secretary was told.
“During the year 2011, the government had approved creation of 3 Excise district offices in Longleng, Kiphire and Peren (respectively). However only 6 posts of constable have been created for the 3 districts, which is far below the minimum requirement in each district.”
Aier proposed the parliamentary secretary to facilitate the creation 50 more posts of Excise constables, 3 posts of Superintendent of Excise and upgrade of 9 Inspectors to Deputy Superintendent of Excise, to boost the present strength.
The parliamentary secretary, BS Nganglang, in his brief address stated that the Excise department had been “sidelined” over the years by subsequent governments because of the “short-sighted interpretation of by government.”
He said that it was a mistake of the government to “assume” that the introduction of dry law would render the “Excise department jobless.”
Nganglang felt that the problems faced by the state Excise department today were due to the “initial steps taken by the government of the day, which went wrong.”
He also asked his department officers to ensure that “nobody is discriminated” in matters of transfer and posting. “Some (employees) always work at the directorate while some are treated as if they were born to be posted at remote areas,” he observed.
