Three face action over leakage in water pipeline

Geetanjali Gayatri and Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 9

Action has been initiated against three officials of the Haryana Public Health Department for their alleged involvement in the misappropriation of Rs 78 lakh meant to lay water pipeline between Ramrai and Jajwan villages in Jind district.

While Engineer-in-Chief Khetarpal has suspended a junior engineer, the cases for suspending a sub-divisional officer (SDO) and an executive engineer have been sent to the minister and the Chief Minister, respectively.

A sum of Rs 78 lakh was released to the contractor without checking the quality of material used for the project. Leakage was noticed at 175 points during testing. The case was taken up by the Public Accounts Committee of the state Assembly.

The Additional Principal Secretary and other senior officials of the department appeared before the committee last week and informed it about the action taken so far.

“We have to submit an action-taken report in three months during which we will chargesheet the officials concerned and conduct an inquiry. The JE was suspended before the last meeting of the PAC and the cases as regards two other officials have been sent to the authorities concerned,” an official said.

The Public Health Department authorities were sanctioned Rs 2.48 crore for the water pipeline from Ramrai village tubewell to Jajwan village. The villages are around 8.5 km apart and the work on the project was started in May 2015.

Water was released in the pipeline in October to test the quality of work.

On December 12, the PAC-led by BJP MLA Gian Chand Gupta started investigating the case. It was found that pipes used for the project had failed quality test in the past. It also came to light that the officers concerned released Rs 78 lakh to the contractor without checking the quality of the material used.