Punjab chief secretary directs all secretaries to inspection development projects

LAHORE: Punjab Chief Secretary Kamran Ali Afzal has directed all the secretaries to conduct inspections of the development projects of their respective departments for quality construction work.

He gave this direction while presiding over a meeting to review the performance of departments in the implementation of the annual development programme at the Planning and Development Department. The additional chief secretary (south Punjab), additional chief secretary home and administrative secretaries of all departments attended the meeting.

The chief secretary said that all the departments should strengthen the monitoring system to ensure quality in the uplift projects. He also directed the authorities to formulate rules for imposing fines in case of faulty construction. He stressed that transparent and timely utilisation of funds should be ensured.

Kamran Afzal lauded the performance of the departments of local government, environment and industries over better utilisation of funds and asked the officers to set priorities in allocating development and non-development budgets. He said that ongoing development projects should be given priority in the next annual development programme.

Chairman Planning and Development Abdullah Khan Sumbal gave a briefing on allocated funds, their releases and utilisation. It was informed that Rs664 billion had been allocated for 8,682 development schemes in the current financial year and third party validation of schemes costing more than Rs400 million would be carried out.