Social Welfare Minister and Kalaburagi in-charge Priyank Kharge said that every district and taluk level officer should visit their lower level offices and fields of work regularly to ensure that development and welfare programmes were implemented as planned.
Presiding over the quarterly Karnataka Development Programme meeting at district administrative complex here on Monday, he expressed discontent over most officers spending most of their time in their offices and directed Regional Commissioner Subodh Yadav, Deputy Commissioner R. Venkatesh Kumar and Zilla Panchayat CEO Hephsiba Rani Korlapati to evolve a mechanism that would ensure officers’ field visits.
Ms. Korlapati said she had to spend considerable time in video conferences (VCs) conducted by her senior officers from Bengaluru at the cost of field visits. Mr. Yadav suggested reserving three specific days in a week for fieldwork and informing the higher authorities about the same in advance. “We can tell the higher authorities about our engagement for field work on specific days and seek their permission to skip VCs assuring them that we should follow whatever emerges from such VCs in our absence,” Mr. Yadav said.
Blacklisting contractors
The Minister got angry on finding that none of the officers in any department had prepared the list of delinquent contractors to be blacklisted for violating tender norms, as he had directed 15 days ago in the KDP meeting.
“There are a number of projects that remain unfinished even years after the commencement of work. I had asked you in the last meeting to prepare a list of such contractors to be blacklisted. None of you has prepared a list... It shows that you are either afraid of the contractors or hand in glove with them,” he said.
Taking exception to projects that were not commissioned even after shown as completed in progress reports, Mr. Priyank said that he would consider only those projects that were commissioned as completed. “Completion of a project is not enough. You need to commission it. Only then will I take it as completed,” he said. He also directed Ms. Korlapati to ensure that all the rural drinking water projects that were sanctioned before 2016-17 and were still incomplete were finished in three months.
He took objection to the fact that new overhead tanks were not built on a priority basis in the villages where old overhead tanks were demolished for various reasons. He did not accept the explanation offered by the ZP CEO who said that no new overhead tanks were built in the last two years thanks to lack of funds. “There is no dearth of funds for drinking water projects. There is a dearth of efficiency in financial management here,” he said.
Upon finding that considerable amount of the money released by the Social Welfare Department under Special Component Plan (SCP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) was still unused, the Minister instantly talked to the Commissioner of Social Welfare on the phone and declared that he would withdraw all the unused money sanctioned up to 2016-17 under the SCP/TSP.