Tourism Secy reviews pace, financial closure of PMDP, CAPEX projects

Tourism Secy Sarmad Hafeez chairing a meeting at Srinagar.
Tourism Secy Sarmad Hafeez chairing a meeting at Srinagar.

Excelsior Correspondent

SRINAGAR, Sept 6: Secretary, Tourism, Sarmad Hafeez today took a detailed review of the developmental projects under PMDP and CAPEX being undertaken by the Tourism Department in a meeting of officers, Chief Executive Officers of various Tourism Development Authorities and representatives of various project executing agencies.
He also reviewed the completion of the works executed by the department for the Shri Amarnathji Yatra-2022.
Addressing the meeting, the Tourism Secretary underscored the need for maintaining a timeline for the completion of developmental works and in no way let the timeline prolong too much. He also stressed on maintaining financial discipline while executing and completing development works.
Sarmad Hafeez asked the engineers and officers to ensure that funds earmarked for various developmental works are properly and timely expended as per the Government instructions while ensuring that no liabilities are created. He impressed upon the executing agencies to ensure that the works and facilities for the Shri Amarnathji yatries are further improved next year in terms of the design and facility.
The Tourism Secretary impressed upon the CEOs, Engineering heads and other officers to regularly review the execution of projects and address the bottlenecks, if any, to ensure timely execution of these projects. He asked the project executing agencies to devise a timeline schedule for completion of various developmental works.
Extensive deliberations were held on the completion timeline of projects, expenditure status and financial closure of these works. It was informed in the meeting that many projects are advancing as per decided timelines and are at various stages of completion. Besides, the lagging projects are also being assiduously pursued by the concerned agencies to ensure their smooth completion.
The meeting was informed that tourism infrastructure projects are underway at places like Tosamaidan, Tral, Harnag (Anantnag), Sonamarg and other upcoming destinations.
The Tourism Secretary impressed upon the executing agencies to pace up their efforts and get the projects completed before the autumn this year.
Director, Tourism, Kashmir, Dr. G N Itoo, CEOs of various Tourism Development Authorities of Kashmir, officers of Tourism Department, representatives of various project executing agencies like R&B, PDD, JKPCC etc. were present in the meeting.