DHAKA, Aug 6, 2019 (BSS) – Planning Minister MA Mannan today directed the secretaries to extensively supervise the works of project directors and project related officials under their ministries and divisions to yield better development outcomes.
The planning minister made the directive at a meeting with the secretaries of various ministries and divisions to review the progress of develop projects held at the NEC Conference Room in the city’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area.
Briefing the reporters after the meeting, Mannan said he would get the current fiscal as a full minister and called upon all the secretaries to work as a team to deliver much more development outcomes. General Economics Division (GED) Member of the Planning Commission Dr Shamsul Alam and Planning Division Secretary Md Nurul Amin were present at the briefing.
“We hope, we’ll be able to deliver much better results in this year. We’ve discussed a number of problems related to project execution ………the Secretaries would look after the works of the project directors,” he said.
The planning minister said the IMED would intensify its monitoring over the development projects in a stronger way and a meeting in this regard would be held in this month.
He said the Planning Ministry would hold meeting with Joint Chiefs, Deputy Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs of various Ministries and Divisions who are associated with formulation of projects in every two months to identify the problems and sort out those to enhance the pace of implementation.
Referring to the trend of amending projects time and again, Mannan said projects could be amended once or maximum two times, but amending project for the 3rd time is not a healthy practice and even Prime Minister is not in favor of this.
Under the circumstances, he said summaries would be placed before the ECNEC on those projects which would be brought for amendment for the 3rd time for cognizance of the Prime Minister.
He said the meeting also discussed about not acquiring access land or acquiring land for any project illogically side by side thinking time and again before acquiring arable land.
He informed that the directives that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had given in various ECNEC meetings would be compiled as a book and thus it would be sent to the Prime Minister. Meetings will be held from time to time to review whether those directives are implemented properly, he added.
The meeting also suggested for conducting feasibility studies properly before undertaking any project to avert unnecessary revision.
Replying to a question, Mannan said the Ministry of Water Resources has already started the use of technology like installing CCTVs at project sites while monitoring the project works. “We’ve a plan to expand the use of technology in project monitoring in the coming days,”
Answering to a question, Mannan said the secretaries did not raise any such major problem before execution of projects while they have pledged to give more time in supervising their projects.
Replying to another question, he said the meeting observed that the project aid utilization was a bit less in the RADP of the last fiscal year and the ERD Secretary would look in to the matter on how to improve further on the issue.
The planning minister told another questioner that efforts would continue to keep up the quality of works alongside implementing the development projects.