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.
