Canada faces a new challenge of ex-bureaucrats grabbing big contracts

1771 Painting Depicting A Canadian Battle

THE trend of retired bureaucrats grabbing high-valued contracts has become a problem in Canada. The Canadian government has now said, any contract worth Canadian dollar of 10,000 or more, or roughly Rs 5.4 lakh, have to be publicly disclosed. The issue cropped up when auditors spotted an instance when a retired public servant, also a pensioner, received a contract of whopping...
$170,000, or about Rs 90 lakh, for which there was no bidding. In the 2011 ranking of corruption watchdog, Transparency International, Canada’s position as a clean country slipped from sixth to tenth in the world. New Zealand, Denmark and Finland are three most non-corrupt countries in the world. India’s rank is way below at 95 among 183 countries in the world for which corruption perception index is brought out annually.
According to an article published in Ottawa Business Journal, Canada’s procurement ombudsman had recently slammed the Canada School of Public Service for the discrepancy, but did not name the bureaucrat-turned contractor. In Japan, Amakudari, a practice where Japanese senior bureaucrats retire to high-profile positions in the private and public sectors, has been a challenge for years.

No taker for JS post in FCI
In a surprising development, the government has found no suitable applicant for a joint secretary’s post in Food Corporation of India (FCI). The position advertised in the first week of August was that of Executive Director (IT) at the rank of a JS. The Establishment Office of DoPT has written to the cadre controlling authorities again to find a suitable candidate for this non-Central staffing post.

Action and Appointments
a) Ms Kusum Singh, a 1984 batch IRPS officer, has been appointed as joint secretary in the department of defence production in place of Satyajeet Rajan, a 1987 batch Kerala cadre IAS.