*Opposes merger of different engg wings in PWD
Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Aug 12: Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) president, Syed Mohd Altaf Bukhari today opposed the J&K Government’s decision to subsume engineering wings of various departments into Public Works Department saying that the move will create too much of mess and confusion on the ground.
In a statement issued here, Bukhari, who has himself remained Public Works Minister in the previous Government in J&K, observed that the R&B department lacks the requisite capacity to handle such a broader mandate.
“A small instance in place is the snow clearance operation which was assigned by the Gulmarag Development Authority (GDA) to the Mechanical Wing of the Public Works Department at Gulmarag last year. The snow clearance which would otherwise take a few hours took three to four days and the vital roads to this world famous tourist destination remained blocked for days together,” he recalled.
The JKAP president said that there will be joblessness because of the merger decision and the technical staff who are presently working in different departments are bound to face hierarchical issues in addition to the hiccups in their career progression.
On setting up a committee of administrative secretaries to work on modalities for merger of over a dozen departments with PWD, Bukhari observed that such decisions are akin to putting the cart before the horse. “Once the decision of merger has already been taken by the previous Lt. Governor led State Administrative Council without any prior home work or taking any stakeholders on board, what is the fun of constituting such a committee to chalk out modalities now?” he asked.
Bukhari said that the J&K Government should have consulted all the stakeholders for threadbare deliberations before arriving at any such arbitrary decision. “No blueprint was put before the State Administrative Council in this regard. Even no feedback was sought from the technical staff and other stakeholders who are bound to get affected after the merger of their departments into PWD. So the present Lt. Governor should intervene and rescind this unilateral decision at an earliest,” he observed.
Bukhari expressed surprise over the rush in taking policy decisions more so when the new Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha has taken his charge recently and shall require some breathing time and space to understand the working and the mandate of different Government departments. “In this situation taking such hasty decisions are bound to impede developmental activities in J&K which are already at their lowest ebb,” he added.
Taking strong exception to the abolishment of reserving projects for Self Help Groups in J&K, Bukhari said that the move will render thousands of educated unemployed youth jobless. “There are around 3000 such groups operating across J&K comprising degree and diploma holders. These groups involve over 15500 engineers who have made this scheme a success. I wonder why Government is pursuing anti-youth policies which can have serious ramifications,” Bukhari remarked.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel