Poor fund spend irks MP C N Jayadevan

Thrissur: Thrissur MP C.N. Jayadevan has blamed the officials for  slow-pedaling the development works   using  the Local Area Development (LAD) funds.  The  members of Parliament were not getting sufficient  funds to take up the works in time due to the officials' apathy,   he  told reporters here on Monday.      Explaining the  implementation of his LAD funds since 2014, he said,  "I don’t put the blame  on the district administration and collector A. Kowsigan. The officials  are slack in dealing with the funds. For instance, on February 2, 2016,  ' 65 lakh was sanctioned from the LAD fund for purchasing computers for different schools in Thrissur.

At first, it was said that the computers need to be purchased from Keltron. Later, that condition was changed and a tender was called. The tender was not opened by the collector for four months and when I asked  about the matter in February this year, I was told that again the state government had  put set  a condition to make the purchase from Keltron,” he  said. The officials go about their business in a traditional way and refuse  to think out of the box, he said. A total of Rs  17.5 crore,  including Rs  15 crore from the LAD fund, has been sanctioned since 2012, he said.

The major allocations from the MP fund are Rs  50 lakh  for the upgradation of Punkunnan railway  station and funds for the solar power plants for St Thomas College and Government College Kuttanellur. A meeting on  the Rs  500-crore Ponnani-Thrissur kole development project funded by the central government,  of which he was recently made the chairman,  will be held in the collectorate next week, he added.