Guv orders release of Rs 6.5 crore for completion of works in Poonch

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, July 9

Governor NN Vohra has ordered release of additional Rs 6.5 crore for the acceleration of the ongoing development works in Poonch district during his day-long visit to the district during which he reviewed the pace of development and met legislators.

Since the imposition of the Governor rule, this was Vohra’s third visit to the field for first hand information on the pace of development works and reviewing the progress achieved. He also ascertained the bottlenecks impeding the completion of works in the field.

He had earlier visited Budgam and Anantnag districts, where he ordered release of an additional amount of Rs 5 crore each in favour of various executing agencies to speed up the pace of works.

The Governor ordered the Deputy Commissioner to conduct a safety audit of protection works. He also directed the chief engineer, PHE, to get a performance audit of all filtration plants in the district done and get the quality of water being supplied through PHE schemes checked on a weekly basis.

The release of Rs 1.37 crore for the completion of phase-I of the satellite campus of Jammu University and for making it functional at the earliest was also ordered.

Earlier, the Governor chaired a meeting with all legislators of Poonch district, including MLAs Choudhary Akram, Shah Mohd Tantray and Javed Rana; and MLCs Shehnaz Ganai, Yash Paul and Pradeep Sharma. The legislators raised various development issues pertaining to Poonch district as well as their respective constituencies. They drew Governor’s attention to the slow pace of development works, staff crunch in schools and hospitals, shortage of drinking water in the district, traffic congestion, and the need for taking up and expeditiously completing various works pertaining to the power sector.

The Governor gave a patient hearing to the legislators and assured them that their issues would be resolved at the earliest.

Later, while chairing a meeting of state divisional and district-level officials, he sought their comments on the issues raised by the legislators in the preceding meeting and reviewed the performance of various sectors. He expressed concern that a number of development works continued to remain incomplete despite the fact that full funding had been assured to them under various state and Central schemes.