With emphasis on rural development, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has appropriately turned his focus on strengthening and expanding rural infrastructure. The Chief Minister and top officials of his government have been highlighting this aspect repeatedly and even motivating engineers to work hard towards achieving this goal. Patnaik spoke to the newly appointed assistant executive engineers of the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department recently to underscore the importance of rural infrastructure development.
A total of 210 assistant executive engineers on January 10 joined the Panchayati Raj & Drinking Water Department. They are the first batch of a new engineering cadre created in the department. Addressing the orientation programme for the newly recruited assistant executive engineers, Patnaik said that Rural Housing & Drinking Water supply were the two flagship programmes of his government and it is committed to converting all kutcha houses into pucca houses in a time-bound manner.
Similarly, the government has set itself a target of providing pipe water to all rural households by 2024. Towards achieving this goal, the government is providing more manpower at the Gram Panchayat level. The creation of the new engineering cadre is reflective of the government’s special emphasis on strengthening and expanding rural infrastructure. The importance of the programme was evident from the fact that it was attended, among others, by Chief Secretary Suresh Mohapatra, Secretary to Chief Minister (also of 5T) V K Pandian and Principal Secretary, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water, Ashok Meena.
Patnaik also took the opportunity to underscore the importance of the Panchayati Raj system, asserting that his government was committed to strengthening it further and empowering its representatives. This has become imperative to ensure that the benefits of development actually reach the poorest of the poor. He urged the newly recruited engineers to deploy all their energy and knowledge to achieve this goal and become a part of the transformation that is taking place in the state.
The engineers were also advised by the Chief Minister to follow and imbibe the 5T model of governance while carrying out their duties. This, the Chief Minister said, was necessary as he had always placed people at the core of his governance formula, which calls upon employees to serve citizens with dignity and professionalism.
It is pertinent to mention that the Chief Minister’s 5T programme is being led from the front by his secretary VK Pandian, who is indisputably the most efficient and dedicated bureaucrat of the state. The government’s most significant transformative programme called Mo Sarkar also falls under the ambit of 5T. The programme has set a new benchmark in administrative reforms for the rest of the country. With almost all the government departments now under the umbrella of Mo Sarkar the improvement in their performance is there for all to see.
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