Dumping documents

The dumping of important RTO documents which were burnt in the Panaji bus stand blaze on October 2 raises serious questions about not only the callousness, but brings to the fore the lack of responsibility of those at the helm. There seem to be no lessons learnt after a legal notice was served to the government over indiscriminate dumping of debris in the mangroves between Panaji, Merces and Ribandar.
Crucial documents that were destroyed in the fire were found dumped along the Old Goa-Ribandar road, a few metres away from the Merces circle. There were documents ranging from copies of aadhaar cards, election cards and passports along with other documents like notarised applications for vehicle transfer, registration certificate book, insurance papers and documents on vehicle ownership of companies. All these were scattered along the roadside and easily accessible to any passerby.
While the Transport Department was quick to blame it on the labourers, their justification that the registration and other records of the office are computerised since 2006 and are maintained in digital form and not destroyed is not an acceptable reason for such dumping. Neither is it acceptable that these documents were of no use to the RTO. It's the responsibility and duty of the Transport Department to do an inventory of the records before discarding them. By no means can any sensible authority dump such public documents on the roadside and get away with it.
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar in a swift action has assured an FIR against those involved, although such a process is yet to be initiated in the absence of clarity on who the complainant should be. Even if an FIR is lodged eventually, there is no certainty on where this would lead. What is completely swept under the carpet is that personal data of the general public which is confidential in nature was at stake and nobody has been pulled up for an offence which is more serious that dumping of ‘material'.
In a strange irony, this was a rarest of rare case where the patrol police and the RTO worked in perfect sync. Hours after a police patrol van stopped a journo from The Goan taking pictures, the RTO acted swiftly on the tip-off and engaged labourers to bury the papers. Labourers hurriedly dispersed the documents by pushing them further in the fields with no efforts being made even at this point of time to salvage the undamaged documents.
Strict action should be taken on all those involved in dumping of these records, not only for the litter along the roadside, but more importantly for being irresponsible in handling confidential public information. Just because the documents are computerized doesn't give the RTO permission to randomly discard such papers along the roadside. The RTO should own up responsibility rather than push the blame on the labourers.