CM Asks Ministers To Be In Office 4 Days A Week

By: Ravinder Makhaik

Shimla: Chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal has asked all cabinet ministers to be in office for at least four days in a week, preferably between Tuesday to Friday, for ensuring availability and effective governance.

Speaking to media persons, he said that on a visit to any of the districts, the ministers have been asked to maintain a direct contact with the people so as to know of their problems first hand.

Dhumal said that he had kept an open house to meet the people whenever he was in the state capital and did not like the durbar style of meeting people, which the previous government used to practice.

The chief minister said that even as the government was working on preparing a Parent Teacher Association (PTA) recruitment policy, a one man committee had been constituted to go into the PTA appointments made by the previous government.

He said that a lot of discrepancies and blatant violations had been noticed and senior officer Deepak Shanan had been asked to look into the issue.

About a review of the power projects allotted by the previous Virbhadra Singh led congress government, he said that his government had set out a target of getting 12,000 MW of hydro generation online by the year 2012. “We are not for unnecessarily delaying project execution schedules but those projects would be certainly reviewed where the states interests had been compromised,” said Dhumal.

The chief minister informed that the states annual plan outlay meet has been rescheduled for the second week of February as Montek Singh Aluwahlia, the deputy chairman of the planning commission, was away for the earlier scheduled meeting on 30th January.

Cutting down laborious protocols, the chief minister said that district magistrates and district superintended police have been asked not to mark their presence at district border merely for protocol purposes of receiving him. “When so ever their presence is needed, I will ask for it,” he said. Dhumal also said that the general administration had been directed to only provide essential vehicles whenever the chief minister traveled by road in the state.