The commissioner of the TN Disabled Welfare (TNDW) department, R Sampath, was placed under suspension on Thursday for allegedly failing to act against corrupt officials in his department.
When human rights activists approached him with complaints against officers who were reportedly swindling pension money meant for disabled people across Tamil Nadu, Mr Sampath allegedly turned them away saying they could approach the vigilance commission.
Activist S.Namburajan said that several petitions along with RTI documents were forwarded to the TNDW department. “Recently, we lodged a complaint against corrupt officials at the CM’s cell.
We are confident CM will order action against these officials for swindling money meant for underprivileged disabled persons,” he said. He said there were cases of many money orders deliberately sent to wrong addresses by the officials so as to pocket the money.
An official who was transferred from Ramanathapuram to Erode and then to Karur had continued to cheat the disabled persons in all the places he worked, the RTI showed.
“But all the errant officials were merely transferred to neighbouring districts. Some of them even got promotions”, he said.
Secretariat sources here said instructions have now gone out to all the district officials to keep their records clean.
“We have told the district collectors to take stringent against corrupt officials,” said a senior official.