People’s accolades for government lies in the hands of officials, says Stalin

Chennai: The State government would be elevated to an exalted level of enjoying the accolades of the eight crore people if the benefits of its various welfare schemes reached them all, a feat that could be achieved only by the officers and officials, Chief Minister M K Stalin said.

People were now showering praises on the government for its schemes like free bus ride for women, free breakfast for children in primary schools and the assistance of Rs 1000 per month for women pursuing higher education courses but there would be more public acclaim if the fruits of all the schemes reached the beneficiaries, Stalin told a meeting of top officers, called to discuss the iconic projects of the State.

Thanking the officials for devising, implementing and monitoring all the schemes envisaged by the government in the past 20 months, he said a government composed of the Chief Minister, Ministers, officers and officials and not the Chief Minister alone. Only a combined effort by all could usher in an era of good governance and thankfully it had been happening successfully in the State, he said.

The meeting had been called to intensify the joint efforts with a view to achieving two goals, one to compensate for the slackness in development that had set in during the past 10 years and two, to ensure that the official machinery whirred more effectively, he said.

Since a government’s success was not in announcing welfare schemes but in their effective implementation, it was the bounden duty of the officers to monitor their progress and address the hitches that might arise in the process of implementation, he said, adding that the department secretaries should take decisions that would expedite the projects without any time delay or stagnation.

Calling for a coordinated effort by the officers of various departments in solving the problems in project implementation, Stalin recommended meetings of secretaries to iron out hitches that might arise in various forms, say like a delay in the issue of orders, he said.

Asking the officers to review the progress of each and every project that had been started and also ensure that work on all the schemes had already started even if they faced fund allocation before the end of the financial year, he referred to two projects that had neared completion.

The library named after M Karunanidhi in Madurai and the proposed multi-specialty hospital in Guindy were the two projects that Stalin mentioned as those being expedited, concluding his speech with a call to officers, ‘let us all work together.’