Raichur: The zilla panchayat, at its general body meeting here on Saturday, passed a resolution to take a delegation of elected representatives from the district to Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy to urge him to take immediate action to fill vacant posts in government departments in the district, including that of the chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat.

The meeting chaired by Roopa Niranjan, president of the zilla panchayat, discussed the functioning of various departments coming under it and progress of development works in the past three months. It felt that the ongoing activities in several departments were affected due to lack of staff. More than 1,300 posts in 13 departments were vacant. But the Government has not initiated any action to fill them. Even the post of the chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat was vacant for the past four months. The Deputy Commissioner had been made in charge of the post. It affected the functioning of the zilla panchayat. The delegation would apprise the Chief Minister on the need to fill vacant posts.

Members said that lack of teachers especially in rural areas had affected primary and secondary schools.

There was a shortage of 404 teachers in the district and 294 teachers had been transferred recently. The Government had affected the transfer without initiating action to fill the vacant posts. In this regard, the meeting passed a resolution and directed the Deputy Director of Public Instruction not to relieve the teachers till alternative arrangements were made to fill vacant posts.

Tardy pace

Expressing concern over tardy pace of various drinking water supply schemes in rural areas, members, including Muniyappa Muddappa, former Minister, A.Papa Reddy, Raichur MLA and Kalmala MLA and Basheeruddin, alleged that the engineering division of the zilla panchayat and the taluk panchayats was not functioning properly. Many of the ongoing water supply schemes had become defunct owing to lack of supervision by departments concerned. They urged the meeting to give directions to officials to complete drinking water supply schemes on time.

Deputy Commissioner Tushar Girinath told the meeting that a grant of Rs.195 lakh was made available for augmenting drinking water supply in rural areas. The funds had been equally distributed to all the six Assembly segments to implement drinking water supply schemes.

Shortage of seeds

The meeting also discussed the steps to be taken to solve shortage of seeds for Kharif sowing when some members complained of seed shortage at raitha samparka kendras.

Mr. Muddappa said about Rs. 9 crore was needed to meet the demand of seeds in the district during this kharif season. But the Government had released only about Rs. 3.5 crore so far. The meeting has decided to bring pressure on the Government to release additional funds for the purpose.

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