Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy handing over an appointment letter to one of the 687 AEEs in Hyderabad on Thursday, as Ministers Ponnam Prabhakar, Uttam Kumar Reddy and Tummala Nageswara Rao look on.
More than half of the Irrigation Department would become empty if the State Government decides to take action against engineers who are directly or indirectly responsible for irregularities and poor quality works in the execution of Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP), Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy said.
“However, the government is not in a position to resort to such a ‘blanket’ decision, despite facing criticism for not taking action against the erring engineers, as it would make the department inoperative,” the CM said at an event organised to hand over appointment letters to 687 Assistant Executive Engineers (AEEs) at Jala Soudha on Thursday.
Stating that nearly half of the Irrigation engineers were involved in KLIP works one time or the other till 2023, Mr. Revanth Reddy said that they were attending the inquiry by the commission appointed by the government on the irregularities in KLIP and trying to justify the project works, though the head works were already in shambles even before completion of the project but were unable convince the panel.
The Chief Minister stated that KLIP, portrayed as one of the man-made wonders, had created irrigation potential for only 52,000 acres even after spending about ₹1 lakh crore and the nearly ₹2 lakh crore expenditure on irrigation sector between 2014-23 had left many projects taken up during the combined State still incomplete even in 10 years of Telangana.
Field visits
Observing that most of the engineers were not going on field inspections in the recent past, he mentioned that regular field inspections and supervision of project works by the engineers in the past had kept many projects standing tall and serving the country even now. But, in case of Kaleshwaram, lack of such inspections and supervision had resulted in collapse of the project.
He asked young engineers to take KLIP as a case study to build their career and become an integral part in rebuilding Telangana, as their employment is linked to the emotion of four crore Telangana people. Water was one of the focal points of the statehood movement along with jobs and funds.
Minister for Irrigation N. Uttam Kumar Reddy said that a total of 687 engineers were appointed as AEEs, including 83 graduates from NITs and 31 from IITs. All the engineers would be posted in the field after training in WALAMTARI.
Published – September 26, 2024 08:49 pm IST
