Finance Secy seeks month-wise progress from all deptts
Finally, people to reap benefits of Guv’s major initiative
Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, May 31: Finally, people will start reaping the benefits of major initiative of the Governor’s Administration as around 1730 languishing projects mostly relating to augmenting water and power supply, improving road connectivity and upgrading healthcare facilities will be completed by the end of current year.
In order to provide fillip to the developmental activities across the State, the State Administrative Council (SAC) in its meeting held on September 5, 2018 under the chairmanship of Governor Satya Pal Malik had approved establishment of Jammu and Kashmir Infrastructure Development Finance Corporation (JKIDFC).
The Corporation was authorized to raise a loan not exceeding Rs 8000 crore from various financial institutions including State and Nationalized Banks for the completion of large number of unfunded and languishing projects.
This major decision was taken by the SAC after it came to the notice of the Governor that large number of developmental projects, which were at different stages of execution, were either inadequately funded or left incomplete due to one or the other reason.
It was further observed by the Governor that some of these projects were languishing for the past over 5 years resulting in not only blocking of funds spent on them but also in cost escalation and time overruns.
As per the assessment made by the Planning, Development and Monitoring Department, the departments namely Roads and Buildings, PHE/Irrigation and Flood Control, School Education, Higher Education, Youth Services and Sports, Health and Medical Education and Tourism accounted for nearly two third of the total unfunded projects.
Since the establishment of JKIDFC, the High Powered Committee has cleared over 2500 languishing projects of different sectors for funding and of these 1730 projects are going to be completed by the end of current year, official sources told EXCELSIOR while disclosing that substantial progress has been made on all these 1730 projects and the same has been shared with the Principal Secretary to Government, Finance Department Arun Kumar Mehta.
“After detailed analysis of progress on these 1730 projects the Principal Secretary Finance Department has asked the concerned Administrative Secretaries to fix and share month-wise targets so that close monitoring of the progress is ensured”, sources said, adding “with this people will start reaping the benefits of the major initiative of the Governor’s Administration by the end of current year”.
“Had this initiative not been taken by the Governor, the fate of huge number of projects would have been hanging in balance till date”, sources further said while disclosing that these 1730 projects relate to augmenting water and power supply, improving road connectivity, upgrading healthcare and education facilities.
Maximum number of projects belongs to Public Health Engineering and Irrigation and Flood Control Department (700) followed by Public Works (R&B) Department (300) and Power Development Department (168). A total of 111 projects of School Education Department, 103 of Health and Medical Education Department, 79 of Industries and Commerce, 73 of Rural Development Department, 65 of Youth Services and Sports and 62 projects of Ladakh Affairs Department are also in the list of 1730 projects being completed by end of current year.
The remaining projects belong to Tourism Department (6), Horticulture (2), Agriculture (8), Higher Education (5), Revenue and Animal Husbandry (one each), Housing and Urban Development Department (26), Tribal (6) and Technical Education Department (13).
According to the sources, the Principal Secretary to Government, Finance Department has asked all the Administrative Secretaries to expedite timely furnishing of payment requests to JKIDFC in order to complete the approved projects in a specified time-frame. They have also been asked to timely convey the difficulties in furnishing payment request to the JKIDFC and time-frame for completion of languishing projects.
Holding politicians responsible for such a long list of languishing projects, sources said, “all those who remained in the power preferred to lay foundation stones of one after another project without making arrangements for necessary funds for their completion”, adding “by doing so they have done injustice with the people as large number of projects failed to yield the desirable results”.
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