LAHORE, Nov 22: Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi directed the provincial bureaucracy on Tuesday to introduce the monitoring system to keep an eye on departments’ performance and proper and timely utilization of development funds.
They must also properly pursue the court cases about the public property of their departments as this was their basic duty and not of the law department. The departments tended to lose public property worth billions of rupees because of their inability to pursue cases in courts. It was their basic duty to pursue the cases and the law department would continue to provide them with legal advice, he said.
The chief minister was speaking to administrative secretaries and the heads of departments at the Punjab Civil Secretariat.
He directed the officials to avoid unnecessary delay in the projects of the people’s representatives. They must keep in mind that they were public servants and should therefore serve the people and their representatives, he said.
The chief minister said the government officers causing unnecessary hindrances in the public welfare works had no right to stay in office. They must give the people’s representatives their due respect, maintaining a good liaison with them.
He said the government’s current Rs63 billion development programme was three times higher than the previous years and it should be used properly
He ordered that departments should hold monthly meetings to review the justified and timely utilization of the allocated funds.
He urged the officials to improve the performance of their departments with regard to the assembly business. He cautioned that the reply to the assembly “answers” was a serious matter which the secretaries concerned should take notice of. He would not tolerate any slackness in this regard, Mr Elahi added.
He commended the Punjab administration’s role in the relief and rehabilitation of the quake-hit people. The NWFP and the Azad Kashmir leadership had expressed gratitude over the succour.
He said he would soon summon meetings of the newly formed district governments which would be attended by the district and tehsil nazims and district officers.
Chief Secretary Salman Siddique briefed the meeting on the development strategy of the government and said the forthcoming annual budget of the province would also reflect its specified development targets for the next three succeeding years.