SRINAGAR, FEBRUARY 10: In order to bolster economy and take Government’s Mission Development ahead, Financial Commissioner, Finance, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, today said that nearly two-thousand vital projects would be completed by March 2021 across Jammu and Kashmir.

“We have completed 300 languishing projects so far. We are firm that we have to complete 2000 projects by March 2021. In this regard, 1000 projects will be completed this fiscal and another 1000 vital projects will be completed next fiscal year,” informed Financial Commissioner, Finance, Dr Arun Kumar Mehta, after holding public grievance camp at Banquet Hall, Srinagar.

He said that Government was adopting two-folder strategy to complete all the languishing projects across Jammu and Kashmir. “One we will complete all the languishing projects and second the new ones will be funded fully, so it won’t happen that we have started a project and it kept languishing for years to come,” he said.

He said that no new project would be allowed to go into “Languishing mark”.

“Very rarely any development project will be allowed to go beyond two to three years in Jammu and Kashmir. They have to be all completed within the set deadline,” he said, adding “All the Contractors must remain assured that whatever projects are taken, they are paid well in time,” he said.

Mehta said that robust Monitoring Mechanism has been developed to monitor and people can report their grievances whenever any developmental activities are carried out across Jammu and Kashmir.

Mehta informed that JKIDFC had taken up 2,274 languishing projects with an investment of Rs. 9111.25 crore. Mehta said that so far 300 projects stand completed and Government was taking every possible step to complete these projects and bolster economy of the region. He said as directed by the LG, Government was giving preferences to local labour and continuously make arrangements to oversee the labour laws are being adhered to by the agencies responsible for engaging workforce and check whether insurance cover is available to all of them.

Mehta said that keeping provision for maintenance of all the assets and creation of amenities like overhead water tanks, library, common field in all the residential projects, Mehta said strict quality control, use of anti-corrosion building material, compressive strength test for roads and suggested avoiding cost and time overruns in infrastructure projects.

Mehta said that Agriculture and Horticulture are the huge priority sectors for the Government. He said such sectors are among the top priorities, people also would like to be taken up by the Government on serious and concrete basis.

Mehta said that the Government was generating positive hopes among people by addressing such developmental issues. He also advised the officials to accelerate the pace of work to meet the committed deadline of March 2020. He asked them to simplify the modalities so that work on each project goes on smoothly. Further, he called for reports about under-achieving or poor performance of some departments.

He said that in addition about 800 projects of Public Health Engineering Department, 422 projects would be completed by March 2020. It was further revealed   that Power Development Department would complete around 165 projects till that time. Public Works Department committed to complete some 170 projects including 65 bridges till March next year. Similarly, Youth Services committed to deliver 77 projects, Health department 55 projects, Irrigation department 59, Technical Education 20 projects, while Housing and Industries departments assured to complete 48 each projects till March 2020.