Year on, lower Kangra residents await reopening of three facilities

Rajiv Mahajan

Nurpur, December 24

Resentment prevails among residents of the lower Kangra region as the government has not restored the offices that were closed by the Sukhvinder Singh government after coming to power a year ago. They have been keeping their fingers crossed as the government, while de-notifying these government institutions, had constituted a review committee to explore the possibility of restoration of viable government offices or institutions. But even after one year, the review committee’s report has neither been submitted to the government nor made public.

The previous Jai Ram government had opened the Electrical Operation Circle Office of the HP State Electricity Board Ltd (HPSEBL) on September 29 last year. The HPSEBL management had reportedly created 16 new posts to make the office functional. A Superintendent Engineer, one Executive Engineer (attached), one section officer, one office superintendent and one junior draftsman were posted in the office. The HPSEBL spent lakhs of rupees on raising the office infrastructure.

Commercial power consumers, who had started getting the facility of load approval here, are now being forced to travel 250-300 km (to and fro) to get that work done at the Dalhousie circle office in Chamba district.

Similarly, the Rs 13-crore 50-bed Mother-Child-Hospital (MCH) inaugurated on October 8 last year was kept closed by the new government. Its equipment, which had been procured by the state health department under the National Health Mission before its inauguration, was sent to the MCH in Una. The government has also shifted the paediatrician and skin and eye specialists of Nurpur’s civil hospital.

The Rs 5.99-crore indoor stadium at Nurpur, which was also inaugurated and made functional on June 2 last year, met the same fate. The state government kept it locked for over 11 months. Following persistent demand by sports enthusiasts, the government recently handed it over to a committee which will run and maintain the stadium.

Former forest minister and ex-local MLA Rakesh Pathania, who took keen interest in opening an electrical circle office, the MCH and the indoor stadium here said that it was unfortunate that the present government had taken no initiative to make these functional even after one year.