Shillong, Aug 11: Meghalaya government on Friday decided to rationalise and limit the foreign visits by chief minister, cabinet ministers and officials to two per financial year.

Cabinet has approved the guidelines for foreign visits by officials of the State Government. It is decided that foreign visits of any official of the Govt. including contractual staff will be limited to 2 visits per year. Out of two visits, State Govt. will sponsor only one… pic.twitter.com/zeF2B2YP72

— Conrad K Sangma (@SangmaConrad) August 11, 2023

Addressing the media after cabinet meeting, Cabinet minister and MDA government spokesperson Paul Lyngdoh said of course, several of these visits are on the basis of invitations, conferences, delegations and so on and so forth in various programmes like externally aided projects, capacity building programmes etc.

“But taking into account the fiscal limitations and also the need to rationalise these visits, it was decided that henceforth foreign visits of any officials of the state government including contractual staffs will be limited to two visits per financial year,” he said.

“It was also decided that if the same official has to undertake the second visit, he should first submit the progress report of the first visit and on his ability to submit a satisfactory report with tangible results then only the second visit will be cleared,” Lyngdoh said while adding that it was also decided that state government can sponsor only one visit and the next will have to be borne either by government of India or external agencies.

“The only exception will happen if that official is visiting a foreign country to receive an award on behalf of the Government of Meghalaya,” he added further.

When asked, Lyngdoh said, “But the whole point is that there have been omni requests and visits undertaken by several officials which only needed the clearance of the chief minister. But today in order as a prudent fiscal measure, the cabinet decided to rationalise such visits, reduce their frequency to two and also obtain progress reports so that there is no wasteful expenditure of the public exchequer.”

“In the case of cabinet ministers, as you are aware this is tied to clearance by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and recently as I briefed you couple of weeks back, the MEA has come up with a very stringent conditions for even clearing such proposals of visits. This includes even the chief minister. They will come under this particular decision which mean one official one visit based on submission of a satisfactory progress report,” he said.

To a query, Lyngdoh said, “The visits seem to be irrational that we decided (to) rationalise it. We can only say that the frequency does not match with the results so we decided to rationalise it.”

According to him, in certain cases, reports have been submitted and in certain cases no such reports were made or maybe the reports were not satisfactory. “…because we are driven by the need to achieve results so what we are saying today is that official, that minister has to show results when undertaken an official visit,” he stated.

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