DHARWAD: K.M. Shivakumar, Secretary, Forests and Environment, and administrator of the Dharwad Zilla Panchayat, on Thursday pulled up officials for their laxity and lack of preparedness.

Mr. Shivakumar, who was addressing a Karnataka Development Programme (KDP) review meeting here, expressed unhappiness over the response of the officials to queries. What particularly annoyed him was that the officials were not able to properly explain the programmes undertaken by their departments in the district. "You have been in service for such a long time and still you do not know to how to give a bird's eye view of the activities in the district," Mr. Shivakumar told them.

He said he would not tolerate this kind of irresponsibility on their part and it is not good for them to attend such meetings without being prepared.

Mr. Shivakumar did not hide his annoyance at the manner in which the nodal officers were taking their job of reviewing programmes in the taluks. How was it that none of them bothered to look into the programmes of other departments during their visits to the taluks, he asked. He directed that the taluk nodal officers should visit a minimum of 20 villages a month and send him a report once in a fortnight on the progress of works in progress in each of the taluks.

It was incumbent on the officials to reach the pro-people programmes formulated by the Government to members of the target group. They must take the KDP meetings seriously and there should be proper coordination between senior and junior officials, he said.

Mr Shivakumar noted that the Karnataka Milk Federation (KMF) unit in the district should pull up its socks to effectively meet the challenge posed by private milk producers, who appear to be doing good work, while the procurement of milk by the KMF is going down.

He expressed surprise over the failure of the Hubli Electricity Supply Company authorities in energising pumpsets attached to borewells drilled by Scheduled caste and Scheduled Tribe beneficiaries. Some of the applications have been pending for 20 months, he noted.

Mr. Shivakumar was told that this was because the beneficiaries were unable to pay the deposit, which came to around Rs. 20,000. He said that he would hold a detailed meeting the next day with the officials concerned to sort out the problem.

He said he did not understand why rural development works slowed down during the monsoon months. There is enough work to be done during the monsoon. The repair of roads damaged by the heavy rain should be tackled on priority, he said.

In-charge Deputy Commissioner S.B. Bommanahalli said Rs. 40 lakhs has been released for road repairs and 1,800 tonnes of foodgrains for different works in progress under the food-for-work scheme.

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