Manmohan Singh urges civil servants to build transparent, accountable system

New Delhi, Apr 21 (ANI): Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on Saturday urged Civil Servants to work towards building a corruption free, more transparent and accountable system for efficient delivery of services to the people.

Inaugurating the seventh Civil Services Day event here, Dr. Singh said: "In my last Civil Services Day address, Dr. Singh said: "Our growth would not have much meaning if we fail in building a truly inclusive society and country. Indeed, without inclusion, social and economic, the very sustainability of our growth processes comes under question."

Calling on civil servants to redouble their efforts to tackle the menace of corruption in public life by adopting more modern methods, Dr. Singh said: "In my last Civil Services Day address on April 21, 2011, I had outlined the measures that our government had taken or was contemplating to tackle the menace of corruption in public life. I believe that since then we have made substantial progress towards strengthening the legislative framework and revamping our administrative practices to enable us to fight corruption better."

"Even as our government moves forward in these efforts, which I don't want to list in detail today, it should be our endeavor that there is no witch hunting in the name of fighting corruption," he added.

He further said: "It is our government's commitment to put in place a system and create an environment in which our civil servants are encouraged to be decisive, and no one is harassed for bonafide mistakes of errors of judgment."

"We stand committed to protecting honest and well meaning civil servants who might have made genuine errors in their work. And I sincerely hope that these intentions of our government are shared by the state governments too," he added.

Dr. Singh further stressed that the civil servants in our country should fight the tendency of not taking decisions because of the fear that things might go wrong and they might be penalised for that.We cannot have a bureaucracy which is hundred percent risk averse. In fact we should encourage boldness in decision making, provided that the decisions are well considered and as per the law of the land. A civil servant who does not take decisions might always be safe, but at the end of the day he or she would have contributed nothing to our society and to our country," he said.

Stating that the country has full faith in its civil servants, Dr. Singh said: "They have served our country well. They have made a very substantial contribution to our country's progress."

"I congratulate them for their achievements. I wish them all the best for the future. But I also hope that they would constantly endeavor to improve, upgrade and modernize the systems and processes they adopt and operate in the best interests of our country," he added. (ANI)