Swine flu nixes babus’ foreign trip

Apparently, swine flu has put a spanner in the foreign visit plans of some IAS officers. Over a dozen IAS officers of Gujarat cadre were scheduled to fly aboard for a month-long training. However, worried about the health of these senior officers, Government of India decided it was better to postpone the visit till the world-wide outbreak of swine flu subsided.

As per the schedule, four IAS officers from Gujarat cadre — Jayanti Ravi from 1991 batch, and Vinay Vyasa, Rohit Pathak and AS Patel from 1992 batch — were to undergo two months training. The first month of the mandatory phase IV training took place in Mussoorie and for the later half, the four officials were to go to South Korea.

“However, we received a letter from the central government to report back to parent state instead of proceeding for South Korea,” one of the officials said. All four of them are back in the state capital. Though it was not mentioned formally, swine flu was the reason for the postponement of the second half of training, said the official.

In addition, nine officials from the batch of 2000 of Gujarat cadre, including district collectors Millind Torawane, Anupam and others, have also went on compulsory phase III training. The exercise started at the Public Administration Training Institute in Mussoorie on Monday. However, these officers also would not be going for foreign trip immediately.

This has obviously put off most of the officials who were looking forward to fully-paid sojourn abroad. Incidentally, Centre preferred to send the officials to China earlier. However, the neighbouring country denied visa to an official, claiming that he did not need one as he was from Arunchal Pradesh, which,  it claimed, was part of China. Later, the officials were sent to South Korea for phase IV and to the US for phase III training.