Improvement Trusts’ heads, trustees removed

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 29

To revamp a “collapsed structure” of local bodies, Local Government Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu removed chairmen and trustees of all 28 Improvement Trusts in the state.

Now, administrators (DCs or SDMs) would head the trusts appointed by the government till further orders, he said.

Sidhu said, “The work in local bodies was not specified. The deadlines were never met. There was no verification of the quality of work. A case in point is a Rs 6 crore work in Hoshiarpur that was sublet through illegal tenders.”

The Improvement Trusts in the state are at Abohar, Amritsar, Barnala, Bathinda, Batala, Faridkot, Fazilka, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Kartarpur, Khanna, Kotkapura, Ludhiana, Malerkotla, Moga, Nabha, Nangal, Nawanshahr, Pathankot, Patiala, Phagwara, Rajpura, Ropar, Samana, Sangrur and Tarn Taran.

The minister said, “An agency from outside Punjab will audit the quality of works of the Local Government Department. Display boards will be installed outside the project sites, mentioning the name of the contractor, job specification, total cost of the project and the deadline.” This week, Sidhu said, the department would divulge action on the loopholes in the current system. “Preliminary findings have brought out that bills were made in the back date because projects were not completed on time. The department’s engineering wing will conduct surprise inspections and report.”