Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan at a press conference in Jalandhar. ribune News Service

ibune News Service

Jalandhar, December 12

Punjab Chief Secretary (CS) Vini Mahajan today said the state government intends to enhance Covid testing by increasing the daily sampling from the current rate of 30,000 tests per day.

In a media interaction here, the CS said that attempts were being made to evolve ways so that the reports of the RT-PCR tests are made available to the patients within 24 hours to check further spread. Vini was in Jalandhar as a part of ongoing field visits to further improve governance, speed up development projects and ensure complete accountability, responsiveness and transparency in the delivery of public services at the grassroots level.

Chairing a review meeting of Deputy Commissioners of Jalandhar division, she directed them to enforce the fresh restrictions imposed on social gatherings and not to let the guard down in the state. The districts of which the development projects and administrative working was reviewed at today’s meeting included Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Pathankot and Tarn Taran.

The projects of key importance that came up for review at today’s meeting included the approach road of Adampur civil airport, functioning of the DAC in Amritsar, preparations for commencing Tarn Taran Law University, progress on the Delhi-Katra expressway project and Smart City works.

She said the aim behind holding such meetings with the officials was to get feedback on ongoing works and schemes of the government and to resolve any issues or constraints that are being faced by the districts.

She was accompanied by Financial Commissioner (Taxation) A Venu Prasad, Principal Secretary Housing and Urban Development Sarvjit Singh, Principal Secretary Planning Jaspal Singh, Principal Secretary Industries and Commerce Alok Shekhar, Principal Secretary PWD Jaspreet Talwar, and Secretary Local Government AK Sinha. Divisional Commissioner Raj Kamal Chaudhuri also attended the meeting. Deputy Commissioners Ghanshyam Thori (Jalandhar), Apneet Riyait (Hoshiarpur), Deepti Uppal (Kapurthala), Mohamad Ishfaq (Gurdaspur), Sanyam Aggarwal (Pathankot), Kulwant Singh (Tarn Taran), Amritsar ADC Himanshu Aggarwal and Jalandhar Municipal Commissioner Karnesh Sharma attended the meeting.