The Punjab Council of Ministers today put its stamp of approval on a blue print to strengthen the infrastructure in rural as well as urban area and approved a composite resource mobilisation plan to ensure time bound completion of projects on a mission mode in next one and half years.Punjab Deputy Chief Minister, Sukhbir Singh Badal who presided over the meeting said that infrastructure sector including basic needs of citizens like water, sewage and civic amenities had been ignored for over 60 years and it is for first time any government has drawn u a composite plan for integrated development of all urban areas including 140 towns and over 12000 villages in one go in one and half year. He said that according to initial estimates over Rs.5000 crore would be required for development of composite infrastructure and Punjab Govt has moped up resources to give it a time bound push. He informed that instead of scattered development, the blue print focuses on integrated development of cities and towns in one go by single company that would be responsible for its up keep for next ten years .
He said that composite resource mobilisation plan had been put in place to provide state-of-art infrastructure, civic amenities and citizen services to the citizens as a matter of right. He said that the blue print includes sewerage to all 165 towns and densely populated villages, potable water supply, ROs in difficult areas, street lights, 24-hour uninterrupted power supply, solid waste management besides equipping all towns and cities with sewage treatment plants. The blue prints also includes upgrading the road engineering of all cities, besides connecting them with 4/6 lane high grade bitumen roads with internationally approved signage and proper maintenance of inner city roads and street lights. To translate the above aims into reality, the Council of Ministers approved a composite additional resource mobilization package solely for above mentioned infrastructure development in rural and urban areas. The plan includes enhancing the rate of infrastructure development (ID) Fee from the existing Re.1 to Rs. 2 per litre on the sale of petrol and Re. 1 per litre on the sale of diesel within the State. Likewise, the Cabinet also gave its nod to levy Infrastructure Development Fee @ Rs.5 for every one hundred rupees of the value of electricity consumed being supplied by the PSPCL within the state. Similarly, the Cabinet also approved to levy ID Fee @ Re.1 for every one hundred rupees of the value of purchase of Immovable property within Punjab. All the amount collected from the above additional resource mobilization would go into a control kitty from where it would be spent on systematic upgrading of infrastructure as detailed above.The Deputy Chief Minister also gave directions to have a regulatory system to monitor the progress of infrastructure projects besides ensuring optimum utilization of funds collected for this purpose. .