GILGIT: Chief secretary Younus Dagha said on Wednesday that the government intends to start GIS based mapping of all villages in Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B).
HunzaNews March 13th, 2014.
In a briefing to journalists on Wednesday, Dagha said the mapping would help point out infrastructural lacking in every area of G-B.
“One of the new initiatives is that we are going to conduct is GIS based mapping of all villages in G-B, which will tell us which villages lack infrastructure like hospitals and schools.”
As the markets in much of G-B closed on Tuesday to protest the withdrawal of the wheat subsidy, the chief secretary hinted at bringing back ration cards to mitigate shortages.
“The data of every family is being collected from NADRA in this regards,” said Dagha.
To minimise corruption and theft in food department, Dagha said they were working on introducing “targeted subsidy” to better help the poor.
Development works
Speaking about up coming development works in G-B, Dagha spoke about projects which are due to be completed and others which will begin soon.
He said that they are setting up a day to day monitoring of under construction power project to ensure 10 megawatts of power are added by June.
Further, Dagha said they intend to link G-B to the national grid to overcome the power crisis permanently .
To improve the sewage system of Gilgit, a plan worth Rs1.5 billion is expected to commence from March 31.
In health sector, more than 80 per cent households in G-B have been accessed to ensure vaccination of children.
‘Merit’ drive
As inquires were held on his orders in various departments for flouting of merit, Dagha became a “ray of hope” for many in a region where a constitutional package [self governance order] led to the formation of an indigenous government for the first.
As a war against corruption goes on, the establishment of anti corruption cell is on the cards while a CM inspection commission has already been activated.
Nearly 1,000 illegal inductions were reversed in education and excise department, and now they are going after those responsible for the illegal inductions.
“To start with, Planning and development [P&D] was the department that lacked planning and monitoring,” said Dagha while sharing the progress of the past eight months since he took charge.
Work is also underway to make a ‘G-B development forum’ to ensure better coordination with donors besides streamline planning of the indigenous projects.
In addition, monitoring has also been given top priority to ensure better utilisation of funds in the development projects.
Teams from P&D will be starting monitoring of projects from March 15.
Similarly in the recent past, at least 200 contractors were blacklisted for either flawed work or leaving the projects incomplete and a dozen engineers were suspended.
Like mineral policy, forest working plan has also been revised and sent to federal government for approval.
With the tourist season coming up, Dagh said that the overall situation of law and order was comparatively better than last year with a crackdown on criminals.
“If we are sincere with ourselves, we shouldn’t compromise with merit,” he said.
Express
