Punjab government to initiate techno-social audit of infrastructure projects

Chandigarh, August 20, 2014: In pursuance of the vision & directions of the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister outlined in a meeting of all Deputy Commissioners and senior officers recently, the Punjab Government has started preparation to initiate social audit of all the infrastructure projects in the State .The aim of this exercise is to bring more transparency into implementation of infrastructure projects of the State.
Disclosing this here today an official spokesperson of the Punjab Government said that in a brain-storming session held under the chairmanship of Sarvesh Kaushal, Chief Secretary, Punjab. It was felt that social audit should be conducted for various Infrastructure projects being implemented by various departments like Public Works Department (PWD), PIDB, Irrigation, Local Government, Housing & Urban Development, Mandi Board etc. It was also suggested in the meeting that top engineering institutes in the State should be associated for the purpose. It was informed that 6 engineering colleges of the State including Punjab Engineering College (PEC), Thapar University and others have already given their consent to carry out the techno-social audit of various ongoing and future infrastructure projects of the State. It was recommended that dedicated funds to the tune to 0.5 percent of the total project cost should be earmarked to finance these technical institutes for conducting the social audit and for capacity building.
It was also suggested in the meeting that concerned Administrative Secretaries of the State involved in the implementation of infrastructure projects should randomly select 10% of the total number of projects being implemented by them. These 10% projects would be selected each from 3 slabs of project value i.e. 0-5 crore, 5-10 & 10-50 crore. It was also decided that for the projects with value more than Rs. 50 crores, the expert services of well-established public sector undertakings such as Engineers India Limited (EIL) of Govt of India would be hired as Project Management Consultants.
Chief Secretary has also issued directions to all the concerned departments to upload the entire information regarding the infrastructure projects on the official website clearly mentioning the scope of the projects, estimates, status, timeline etc. He also directed the departments to put sign boards at the sites of the projects indicating details of the project, contractor, timeline and the concerned supervisory officer along with the name and telephone number of the person to whom any complaint needs to be addressed by general public. Departments have also been asked to strengthen the citizen grievance mechanism to ensure the public participation in the overall development of the state.
Chief Secretary also directed to upgrade the Quality Manuals of the departments to ensure effective evaluation of the infrastructure projects of the state. He suggested the departments to take technical advice from top level experts of the given field.
While explaining the vision of the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in this regard to the officers, Chief Secretary emphasised to all officers    that Techno-social audit would help to gauge the usefulness of the projects to the end users, rectify the deficiencies in implementation process and help in redesigning the objectives, focus and mode of implementation if necessary. He said that Techno- Social audit has become one of the most popular accountability tools used across the globe for better formulation, implementation and evaluation of various projects & schemes from social perspectives.