BHUBANESWAR: Panchayati Raj and Rural Development minister Rabi Narayan Naik on Friday directed the department authorities to impose penalty on a day-to-day basis on agencies for delay in timely execution of drinking water projects.
Taking a review of the works, the minister said the state government is committed to provide safe drinking water to all households in the state by 2026. The project implementing agencies should be told in clear terms to complete their work in time or will face heavy penalty. The penalty must be applied for each day’s delay in the project completion.
He further directed that accountability should be fixed on engineers and officials concerned and they should be punished by way of salary cut if the deadlines are not met.
With only 18 out of 207 sanctioned mega drinking water projects completed so far, the minister expressed his displeasure and asked the officials to complete another 54 projects by the end of this year. He emphasised regular monitoring and review of construction work of projects under implementation.
The department has set a target to complete 21 projects by August, 11 by September and 22 by December. Currently, over 68.16 lakh out of 88.76 lakh households in the state have tap water connection.
With twork order issued to over 60,000 beneficiaries for construction of houses under Antyodaya Gruha Yojana, Naik instructed the officials to ensure that the beneficiaries do not face any hurdles. All necessary assistance should be provided including credit linkage from banks for home loans.
He also reviewed the progress of projects undertaken under MGNREGS and stressed that physical assets created under the scheme should be income generating for the economic growth of the local community. He called for special focus to 30 blocks and three districts which are still lagging in implementation of the welfare programmes.
Apart from senior officers of the department, chief executive officers of all DRDAs and block development officers joined the meeting virtually.