Render graft-free services or face music: KTR to civic babus

Hyderabad: Stating that the aim of the government was to provide people centric administration, Municipal Administration Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday warned the Municipal Commissioners and town planning officials of stringent action if they are involved in corruption.

The minister was speaking in a meeting of commissioners of municipalities at MCR HRD institute. He called up on the officials to reach out to the people and asked them to make sure they keep the new Municipal Act with them as job chart. "Citizens in towns are not expecting miracles from the officials. They will be happy even if their primary needs are met. Try to work as per the aspirations of the people," said KTR.

The minister stated that Telangana State was formed with the spirit of decentralisation of power and the officials should work with the same spirit. The government formed new mandals, revenue divisions, districts, municipalities and corporation to provide many more administration benefits.

The commissioners should work with their staff mingling with people to provide the benefits of decentralisation. "The new Municipal Act gives top priority to sanitation, greenery, civic services, using of technology and online services, grievance redressal, providing permissions to the buildings without any scope for corruption. The officials should work keeping this in mind," said KTR.

The minister mentioned that the primary duty of every commissioner is sanitation in towns. The commissioner should review on town sanitation at 4.30 am every day. Apart from this, they should try to bring up unique programmes for maintaining hygiene. Officials should try to maintain enough public toilets in the town and also should ensure She Toilets especially for women, he said.

The minister further said that at least 10 per cent of the budget should be spent on green planning. The programmes should be designed in such a way that the aim should be to ensure greenery in towns. Every town should have green plan along with sanitation plan. Apart from these, health plan should also be ready to cope up seasonal diseases.

Support of veterinary doctors, entomologists and other staff should be taken, said the minister.

Rama Rao said that government brought new Acts with an aim to provide corruption free civic services and transparent administration and as part of this, the TS bPass was brought in which building permission has to be given within 21 days. "There will be no compromise on this... we are planning guidelines, policies to curb corruption and we will be implementing them strictly.

Even after explaining about the government's priorities, if any official is found in corruption, they will not just get suspended but removed from the services," warned the minister, adding he would monitor the building permissions from Hyderabad.