Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today asked the Water Supply and Sanitation department to prepare a comprehensive ‘Master Plan’ to ensure smooth implementation of state’s cent percent water supply schemes across the state.Mr. Badal was presiding over a high level meeting of the senior officers here at his residence late last evening to review the functioning and progress of the department. Pointing towards the bottlenecks in departmental functioning, the Chief Minister approved the rationalization plan of the department and asked the Principal Secretary, Water Supply and Sanitation to draft a transfer policy to be implemented at the earliest for smooth functioning of the department. Expressing concern over the indiscipline and lethargic attitude of employees, Mr. Badal warned that non-performing officers would be compulsorily retired. He categorically asked the Principal Secretary to regularly monitor the performance of senior officers and in turn they should also review the performance of their subordinates. Any officer or official found to be delinquent or showing laxity would not be allowed to continue in service and would be given marching orders. He said the people’s service should be our sole motive and we should make all concerted efforts to deliver the goods effectively for their betterment.
The Chief Minister directed all the Superintendent Engineers (SEs), Executive Engineers (XENs) of the department to prepare their tour schedules and ensure regular interactions with the village Panchayats besides inspecting the ongoing water works schemes and projects in tandem with the respective Panchayats.Referring to the issue of staff shortage in the department, Principal Secretary Water Supply and Sanitation apprised the Chief Minister that as many as newly recruited 120 Junior Engineers, 30 Draftsmen and 30 SDOs would soon join the department as the process of their selection had already been completed. The Chief Minister also directed the SEs to prepare the constituency wise lists of the villages in their respective circles, where the people were not coming forth to contribute their due share for the maintenance the Water Supply Scheme. He said that after complete survey, a strategy to motivate and mobilize the people would be chalked out with an active involvement of political leaders of particular areas.
In order to lessen the stress of litigation work on the departmental officers, Mr. Badal asked the Principal Secretary Water Supply and Sanitation to evolve a mechanism to appoint OSDs (Legal) having fair knowledge of department’s functioning on contract basis for quick disposal of cases in the courts besides giving legal opinion on the day to day matters, thereby saving lot of time and energy of the officers.Realizing the routine hardships faced by the people, the Chief Minister advised the officers that the sites for the RO units must be selected at some central place of the villages to facilitate them to fetch water from the possible nearest distance.
The Principal Secretary Mr. Suresh Kumar informed in the meeting that out of 15000 villages, 14000 had been covered under water supply schemes, 5000 villages were getting 70 liter water daily per family and in others availability of water was 40 liter per family. About 905 villages were being covered under new water schemes. He further said that 244 schemes were not functional since long. A recent survey revealed that water supply schemes in 140 villages were completely non functional in Gurdaspur district and it required Rs. 11.44 crore to revamp them. The Chief Minister reiterated that since the potable water supply was on the top agenda of the government and it would ensure release of adequate funds for the maintenance and augmentation of the schemes. He asked the finance department to immediately release Rs.11.44 crore to make the rural water supply schemes functional in the Gurdaspur district.
Prominent amongst those who were present in the meeting included Principal Secretary Mr. Suresh Kumar, Special Principal Secretary to CM Mr. Gaggandip Singh Brar, Chief Technical Coordinator Mr. SR Aggarwal, Mr. RL Kauldhar, Mr. AK Soni and Mr. DS Cheema (all Chief Engineers), Mr. SK Saini, Mr. BS Kang, Mr. Kulbir Singh, Mr.Sohan Lal, Mr. NS Pandori, Mr. Kamal Vohra, , Mr. Mukhtiar Singh, Mr. GK Gupta and Mr. RK Talwar .