MC’s Rs 257-crore push to infra development in city

Tribune News Service

Nitin Jain

Ludhiana, December 19

The Municipal Corporation (MC) has given a major thrust to the infrastructure development in the state’s biggest and largest city, in terms of area and population, officials have said.

Our government is committed to providing best infrastructure and basic civic amenities to residents. A host of major projects had been taken up to give a new look to the city. — Sanjeev Arora, RS MP

A sum of Rs 257.31 crore has been sanctioned for the development of civic infrastructure, including construction of roads, streets, drains and improvement of basic civic amenities such as water supply, sewerage, street lights and cleanliness, across the MC limits spread over 159.37 sq km housing over 16 lakh population, as per the 2011 Census, which is at present estimated over 22 lakh.

The projects were undertaken under the state government’s flagship, “Punjab Urban Environment Improvement Programme (PUEIP)”.

The progress of the works being undertaken under the scheme was reviewed by Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora here recently.

MC Commissioner Sandeep Rishi briefed Arora that a total of 465 works covered under three phases of the PUEIP had been approved for Ludhiana and a sum of Rs 25,730.97 lakh was sanctioned to undertake these projects so far.

He said the works had been tendered at the cost of Rs 22,337.74 lakh and as many as 439 works had already been completed at the cost of Rs 18,575.2 lakh while the work on the rest 26 projects costing Rs 3,762.54 lakh were in the advanced stage of completion.

The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member of the Upper House from Punjab expressed satisfaction over the physical progress of 92 per cent and financial progress of 84 per cent achieved under the PUEIP by the Ludhiana civic body.

Arora exhorted the MC Commissioner to ensure completion of the ongoing works at the earliest as per the quality control measures stipulated in the work orders.

Under the PUEIP, which was launched by the state government to ensure overall infrastructure development while ensuring environment improvement in urban areas, the district-level committees had been constituted by the Finance Department through the Punjab Urban Infrastructure Development Board (PIDB), which were mandated to undertake the work of conceptualisation, identification, execution and monitoring of the urban infrastructure project under the state-level scheme.

The committees define the scope of work and financial outlay of the projects and forward the work estimates to the Department of Local Government. Technical specifications of the projects were provided by the Local Government Department and forwarded to the PIDB.

MC officials said the works were executed as per the standard operating procedures (SOPs) of the Local Government and provisions of the Punjab Municipal Corporation Act were strictly compiled with. No estimate of any project contained the departmental/contingency or any other administrative charges.

The MP was further told that independent third party technical and financial audits were carried out by the Local Government for all projects under PUEIP.

The funds sanctioned under the scheme were strictly utilised for projects they were approved for and any change of work would have to be approved by the executive committee of the PIDB .

It was also intimated that the funds were not used for operation and maintenance (O&M) of existing facilities or acquisition of moveable assets such as computers, sports kits, utensils, stationery, etc. They were utilised for new projects and not for clearing outstanding liabilities. The executing agency has ensured that the projects have not been funded from any other source.

The MC said no project was undertaken on private land after obtaining technical and administrative approvals from the competent authority of the Local Government.

Utilisation certificates of completed jobs were submitted to the PIDB.

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