Foreign study tours, or jaunts?

HYDERABAD: Foreign tours are generally undertaken by ministers and officials to exchange innovative ideas with hosts or study the best practices being implemented in other countries.
But for Telangana ministers and bureaucrats foreign tours turn out to be mere pleasure trips. They don't even conform to such formality as submitting reports on their return from dozens of foreign tours.
Several crores are being spent in the name of study tours and conferences and workshops in foreign countries every year, but nobody knows what fruits they bear.
A retired principal secretary , who was in the chief minister's office and handled other important departments such as municipal administration in the united AP , visited as many as 90 countries during his entire service and had not submitted any report on the outcome of his tours.
After formation of the state, about 20 bureaucrats have undertaken foreign tours either in the name of stu dy tours or participation in official conferences. Similar ly, half a dozen Telangana ministers, including K Tara ka Rama Rao, Jupally Krish na Rao, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy , Nayani Narsimha Reddy , Etala Rajender and Jogu Ramanna visited vario us countries. In fact, KTR vi sited several countries for at tracting investments and al so to interact with industri alists.
None of them has submit ted reports to the state go vernment on the outcome of their visit. Finance minister Etala Rajender went to Aust ralia and New Zealand to stu dy VAT and GST in that co untries and another mini ster Pocharam Srinvas Red dy went to Tel Aviv, Israel to participate in an agriculture exhibition, while Jupally Krishna Rao went to Phil delphia, US, to participate in bio international conven tion.
Irrigation principal se cretary SK Joshi went to Australia and Spain to study integrated water resources management, GHMC commissioner B Janardhan Reddy toured France as commissioner of municipal administration on Indo-French exchange. Tribal welfare department officials went to `exposure' programme to Peru in June this year.
While expenditure for most of the tours were borne by the state government, some were sponsored by the hosts of events.
The Centre recently directed its officials who had undertaken foreign trips since 2003-04 to declare outcome of their trips. The decision was taken by the Centre as they have become mere pleasure jaunts.
“Already the Telangana government has decided to restrict the foreign tours by the of ficials mainly to arrest the wasteful expenditure by the various departments. The state government is also mulling issuing guidelines in this regard,“ a senior official of the Telangana government told TOI. The official admitted there were no specific rules or guidelines on foreign tours.
“Generally when officials visit other countries officially or study tours, they orally brief the minister concerned. Nothing is being given in the form of report unless asked for by ministers or the chief minister,“ a joint secretary of the state government said.
In some cases, though one or two officials submit their reports, it is dumped in the record room. For instance officer on special duty of municipal administration and urban development department V Narender Rao went to Singapore and Hong Kong to study urban transport planning and management in February , 2015. But his report has not yet been studied by the state government.