Be empathetic, accessible to public, CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy tells collectors

Vijayawada: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday issued key directives to collectors and officials of 26 districts during a video conference on the Spandana programme.

He directed the officers to pay special attention to government initiatives along with public grievances and be more empathetic, humane and accessible to people.

The Chief Minister said that the main reason for creating 26 districts was to make governance more accessible to people. He directed the authorities to keep micro-level targets and work towards achieving them. Jagan told them to set a target of creating one lakh man-days every day in each district and 25 lakh man-days in a month, besides completing over 60 per cent of the works in April, May, and June. Reviewing the housing programme, the CM stated that the government had set a target of building 15.6 lakh houses in the first phase and instructed the authorities to focus on the construction of the houses. As the construction of 42,639 houses is pending due to court cases, officials were asked to put efforts in resolving cases and to look for alternative locations if they were not resolved.

He stated that the construction of houses under 'Option 3' will be taking off from April 28 and 1.23 lakh house pattas will also be distributed on the same day, besides starting construction of 1.79 lakh PMAY, YSR-Gramin houses, taking the total number to 21.24 lakh houses. On this occasion, the Chief Minister said that special awards will be given to those public representatives who played an active role in the construction of houses.

He stated that the performance of District Collectors will be evaluated on seven parameters like housing, the Nadu-Nedu initiative, quality in resolving Spandana grievances, SDG objectives, NREGS, Comprehensive Land Survey, and functioning of village/ ward secretariats.

Similarly, the performance of police will be evaluated based on ACB, SEB, Disha and prevention of social media harassment. He directed the officials to constantly monitor the government initiatives and ensure smooth progress of works without any delays.

The Chief Minister said that the government is actively taking up road maintenance works with Rs 2,500 crore and road widening works across the State under NIDA with Rs 1,158 crore. He said that never in history has such a huge amount of money been spent on the maintenance of roads and told them to supervise the works constantly, take pictures of them, and let people know about the initiative.

He stated that the Nadu-Nedu programme is the highest priority project, where around Rs 16,000 crore is being spent on revamping educational institutions and another Rs 16,000 crore is being used for refurbishing government hospitals. He said that MLAs will be touring those schools from May 2 and emphasised maintaining the revamped schools. He directed the Collectors to hold Spandana programmes every week.