FAISALABAD, Nov 25: All administrative secretaries of the province have been assigned different tehsils of Faisalabad division to monitor ongoing projects, and the incumbents will come up with their recommendations in a debriefing scheduled to be held at commissioner’s office on Friday.

The decision was taken in a meeting at commissioner’s office with Chief Secretary Javaid Mahmood in the chair on Tuesday. As many as 22 secretaries and district coordination officers of Faisalabad, Jhang and Toba Tek Singh attended the meeting.

Addressing the participants, Commissioner Zahid Saeed said development projects worth Rs50 billion were going on in three districts of the division that required strict monitoring.

He said lack of monitoring had been hampering the quality of development projects and indifferent behaviour of public departments was also worsening the situation.

Agreeing with the commissioner, the chief secretary assigned 13 tehsils of the division to two administrative secretaries each and directed them to visit the allocated areas personally and submit their reports in Friday’s meeting in which all bottlenecks would be discussed and removed.

He said the previous government increased the seats of National and Punjab assemblies beside district assemblies only to diminish the importance of elected representatives.

Former rulers had issued funds only for drains and soiling instead of mega projects for the district and owing to this approach, billion of rupees went down the drain rather than benefiting the public, he added.

He said there was no mechanism available to arrest the ‘criminals’ who carried out substandard constructions.

He also directed the officials to visit the areas where workers had been residing and ascertain the problems they had been facing.

Owing to importance of the city, the government could not overlook its problems, the chief secretary said, adding the provincial government had been doing its utmost to facilitate the entrepreneurs and labourers as well.

He said the government would ensure education, health, residence and social security facilities to workers. The situation required a complete study of the workers’ problems, he added.

The chief secretary also asked the local government secretary to hand over the audit reports of all tehsil municipal administrations (TMAs) to commissioners for strict monitoring of financial matters.

An open court will be held on Wednesday (today) at commissioner’s office where the chief secretary would hear the problems of masses and direct the departments concerned for their immediate solution. He will also inspect various ongoing projects.