Chief Secretary, Dr. Arun Kumar Mehta conducted virtual tour of works taken up under the central flagship programme Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) across the UT of J&K. He interacted with public and officials of the department for taking first hand appraisal of the progress made in the mission so far.
The virtual tour took place in a meeting attended by Principal Secretary, Jal Shakti Department; Mission Director, JJM; Deputy Commissioners; Special Secretary, JSD; Director Finance, JSD; Chief Engineers; Superintending Engineers; Executive Engineers and other officers of the Jal Shakti Department.
At the outset, the Chief Secretary asked the officers about the progress of the mission and asked them to meet the deadlines without any fail. He directed them to tender all the components of each scheme to complete them fully.
He also urged them to expedite the tendering of remaining works so that these are taken up before March this year. He impressed upon them to involve the local people so that the scheme runs successfully in future as well.
He enjoined upon the officers of the mission to augment the monitoring mechanism for the effective implementation of this mega mission. He also stressed on third party evaluation of the works besides greater role for public representatives and Paani Samities in monitoring progress.
He laid stress on using techniques like Critical Path Method (CPM) and Resource Management System for better control and understanding of the priority areas and discerning the way forward to complete each work on time.
He instructed the officers to carry out the capacity building of the field workers so that the mission worth Rs 11000 Cr is implemented efficiently. He maintained that such missions provide golden opportunity to departments to enhance their efficiency in terms of capacity of their employees and addressing the manpower requirements as well.
Dr Mehta also asked about the pace of water testing under JJM and the remedial measures taken in case of poor quality of water found anywhere. He exhorted upon them to involve people and PRI representatives in the testing process and give the testing kits to PaaniSamities for quality check of the tap water.
The Principal Secretary, Shaleen Kabra informed the Chief Secretary that the mission is under implementation from 2019 and has achieved a substantial progress till now.
He informed the meeting that all rural institutions like schools, Anganwadi centres and health institutions has been provided piped water under this mission.
He revealed that every remaining rural household would get the tap water connection under this mission by June this year as most of the targets would be completed by then.
In the presentation he threw light on all the aspects of the mission. He gave detailed analysis of the objectives, procedures, progress and way forward to take the mission to its logical conclusion.
It was further given out that of 6774 works 6712 had already been tendered out and 3696 works stands allotted till date. It was further revealed that 1893 works are currently under progress and 284 works stands completed in the UT.
It was given out that all the works of the Mission would be allotted till March this year. The meeting was apprised that in order to enhance the transparency and monitoring of the works NGOs have been empanelled as Implementation Support Agencies (ISAs).
These ISAs are going to work across villages and help in capacity building of Gram panchayats, PaniSamities and perform other support activities as well.