Chief minister Mamata Banerjee today issued a stern warning to the contractors and the officials for dereliction of duty, while doing work for laying of pipelines to distribute water to every household.
Miss Banerjee, who held a meeting virtually with all the district magistrates of all the districts of the state at Nabanna today, held that work on testing of soil while laying of water pipes was not being done properly. As a result, piped water is yet to reach every house despite work on laying pipelines being completed.
The meeting was also attended by the chief secretary, home secretary, DGP and other senior government officials.
“Laying of pipelines does not mean water has reached households and the people are deriving benefits from it. Works had been done on laying pipelines but water is still to reach them and this is due to abject negligence of the contractors concerned and the officials, who don’t verify the work allegedly done by the contractors and engineers during soil testing. This would have to be shunned and verification must be initiated while work on testing of soil is on. This is nothing but a negligence and dereliction of duty by the concerned engineers. Chief secretary had been asked to take up the issue with concerned district officials and PHE officials,” said Ms Banerjee.
The chief minister also vented her ire on the alleged trend of damaging the pipes being laid by the government departments like PHE, PWD. She said it has come to notice that some are intentionally damaging the pipes and using the water to serve their own purposes and either by using it for irrigating their farm lands or for their own households. This would not be tolerated, she said.
She asked DGP Rajeev Kumar to deal with such elements with a strong hand. Any person found complicit with any wrongdoing should be dealt with.
The chief secretary had been asked to look into the DPR (detailed project report) prepared by the contractors while work on testing of soil was being conducted.