Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar has directed the officials concerned to focus on provision of drinking water, sanitation and other amenities at Medaram where the Sammakka Saralamma Jatara, the biggest tribal festival, is set to start from Wednesday.
With just a day left for the commencement of the Jatara, the Chief Secretary reviewed the arrangements with senior officials through a teleconference on Tuesday. He wanted the departments concerned to gear up to provide services in full measure to huge number of pilgrims expected to visit the Jatara site.
Focus should be on provision of toilets, buses, parking lots and other facilities to avoid inconvenience to the visiting pilgrims to make sure that the visit to Jatara would become memorable to pilgrims in line with the wishes of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. The inter-sectoral teams constituted to supervise the arrangements should meet once a day and plan the course of action.
They should put in place a mechanism to identify the shortcomings, if any, and take steps to rectify them at the earliest. Contingency plans should be prepared for works like road repairs and the officials should ensure that there was no shortage of staff for taking up the works. Special emphasis should be laid on traffic movement and safety of the pilgrims and nodal officers should be posted at the toll gates to ensure that there was no scope for traffic jams.
Director General of Police M. Mahender Reddy, senior officials Vikas Raj, Rajat Kumar, Sunil Sharma and others participated in the teleconference.