Construction of concrete bunkers for the safety of residents of villages along the International Border (IB) and Line of Control (LOC) in the Jammu division has been sped up in view of frequent shelling of these areas by Pakistan troops.

The centre has approved construction of about 14,000 bunkers in the Jammu, Kathua and Samba districts along with the IB and Rajouri and Poonch districts along the LOC.

Construction work in the mountainous Rajouri and Poonch districts was earlier held up because the cost of completing bunkers in these areas was higher than what had been sanctioned for the plains. However, the hurdle has been cleared by the centre by increasing the allocation for these areas.

Several women, children and men were killed in the recent incidents of mortar shelling by Pakistan troops and residents of these areas have been demanding bunkers for their safety for a long time.

Divisional Commissioner Sanjeev Verma chaired a meeting with the Deputy Commissioners of the border districts to review progress on the construction of bunkers. The meeting was attended by Deputy Commissioner, Jammu, Ramesh Kumar, Chief Engineer, PWD (R&B), Nasir Goni, Executive Engineers of PWD while Deputy Commissioners of Kathua, Samba, Rajouri and Poonch, along with Engineers of PWD and RDD, attended the meeting through video conference.

The Deputy Commissioners apprised the Divisional Commissioner of the progress of works on under-construction individual and community bunkers in their respective districts.

The DC Rajouri informed that 222 bunkers have been completed in Nowshera, 160 in Rajouri while 232 bunkers are at the slab-level while 421 are at different levels of execution.

DC Poonch informed that 131 bunkers have been completed by PWD and 15 by Rural Development Department while 93 bunkers are on a slab-level and 199 bunkers are at different stages of completion.

Meanwhile, DC Samba informed that 862 bunkers have been completed so far and 66 bunkers are on a foundation level while work on the remaining is in different stages of completion.

DC Kathua informed that 795 bunkers have been completed in the district while remaining bunkers are in different stages of execution. DC Jammu also informed about the number of bunkers completed so far besides apprising about the number of bunkers at foundation-level, superstructure-level and slab-level.

Verma sought details of the availability of construction material for these bunkers in all the districts. He directed the executing agencies to set weekly targets and expedite the pace of work for the timely completion of the bunkers. He also directed the DCs for effective monitoring of construction of bunkers besides asking them for initiating strict action against the poor performing engineers.