The Public Works department (PWD) has finalised a concrete action plan to strengthen its vigilance mechanism across the State with better technological support, human resource and mobile testing lab facilities for quality check.
The details of the action plan meant for a scientific social auditing were announced by Public Works Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas after chairing a special meeting of the recently constituted vigilance committee at the Government Guest House in Kozhikode on Friday.
Mr. Riyas said the strength of the vigilance team, which now has four executive engineers under a Deputy Chief Engineer, would be improved with the support of more officers and the required number of official vehicles. Apart from upgrading the PWD’s existing quality control offices, there would be efforts to launch three mobile quality testing laboratories for the department with automatic report generation features, he said.
“These labs will be equipped with high-end features to carry out spot tests and give spot results. The prime objective of the initiative is to expose suspected malpractices during the construction of roads that affect their quality,” the Minister said. The Minister said action would be recommended against contractors or officials concerned on the basis of scientific lab inspection report.
Referring to the department plan to ensure the presence of PWD officials at the sites of major works, Mr. Riyas said the vigilance team would be monitoring these for proper compliance of officers concerned. Those failing to fall in line with the instructions would be liable to face department-level action, he warned.
Countering political criticism against him for his active field-level actions, Mr. Riyas said those who treated his flash inspections and follow-up actions as public relations campaigns were people who wanted to hide elements of corruption from the public.
“My priority is doing my work perfectly with the aim of making the department more efficient and weed out elements of corruption completely,” he said.
