JAMMU: More than two months after the State Administrative Council (SAC) headed by Governor N N Vohra had approved creation of 187 posts for two dedicated project wings, one each for the Jammu and Kashmir regions, and one Project Management Unit (PMU) at the secretariat level for monitoring and timely completion of power projects in the state, the BJP-PDP alliance government headed by Mehbooba Mufti is yet to make any significant headway in the direction.
Both Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Dr Nirmal Singh, who is also holding the charge of the PDD department have separately chaired review meetings but so far they have not taken any significant decision to set the ball rolling in setting up these project wings in both the capital cities of the state.
In the absence of these project wings the implementation of various centrally sponsored schemes and flagship programmes are adversely affected in the state.
The idea was conceptualised to ensure timely completion of power reform process involving total investment of Rs. 6000-7000 crores in the coming years.
At present most of the senior engineers are either handed over the additional charge or stop gap arrangements have been worked out but no concrete steps have been announced by the PDD minister to address the grievances of local masses feeling the pinch of poor planning an tardy implementation of R-APDRP programme in the state.
According to official sources, “SAC had even approved two posts of Chief Engineer, six posts of Superintending Engineer, 14 posts of Executive Engineer, 35 posts of Assistant Executive Engineers (AEEs) and AEs and 54 posts of Junior Engineer and other support staff for these
units to kick start the necessary ground work but barring lip service and doling out assurances the state government especially the state Power Minister has failed to deliver goods and initiate key reform process to solve the power woes of common masses.
Interestingly, SAC had even approved hiring of manpower (a total of 96 stenographers, junior assistants/data entry operators, drivers and orderlies) from the open market and by outsourcing. The creation of the posts is initially for five years.
The funds for hiring, operationalisation of the two wings and the PMU will be provided by the Finance Department.
The creation of these large number of posts was mandated after the Union Government headed by Narendra Modi accorded top priority to the power reforms in the state and also pumped huge chunk of money under various flagship programmes like the Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme (R-APDRP), Integrated Power Development Scheme, Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Prime Minister’s Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Programme in the next three years.
The project wings were conceptualised to handle new projects in the distribution sector, and the same was considered essential as the personnel of the department were already stretched with their operation and maintenance responsibilities and not geared to handle this size of public investment.