Delhi water minister Kapil Mishra on Saturday held meeting with senior executives to ‘make action plan on rooting out corruption from Delhi Jal Board.’
A statement fron the government said thaf the ministers had ‘instructed’ the members and senior engineers of Delhi Jal Board to work on issues raised by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s recent letter on corruption.
Mishra, who is also the chairman of the DJB, said, “The Delhi Jal Board has done phenomenal work in laying new water pipelines, making transformative policy changes in tariffs benefiting traders and businessmen, framing pro-people water amnesty scheme and improving quantum of sewage treatment across Delhi. However, there have been many complaints related to corruption in new water connections, faulty procurement of water tankers from DJB and slow installation of piped water supply and repair of water pipeline. We have to ensure that the Delhi Jal Board works at par with the highest standards of transparency and institutional efficiency to ensure that the common citizen experiences government in a way they have never done before.”
The meeting also agreed that all the verticals in the Delhi Jal Board would make a detailed action plan to work on increasing transparency in Delhi Jal Board.
Mishra said, “We have to ensure that there is First-In-First-Out processing for water connections in Delhi. We also need to remove government interface at every level. Why should the citizen know where the zonal office is? Why should the citizen know where the Executive Engineering is? We have to remove citizen interaction with government because that increases the avenues of corruption. For water connections, grievances on water pipelines and sewer connections/repair, we should process it using our call center and mobile phone application in a centralized manner, and fix accountability in a time-bound manner on each matter pending.”
He said that there were many grievances related to corruption in bill payment, water amnesty scheme and new water connections where the DJB officers were allegedly taking money in return for services.
“Government services are a citizen’s right and not a favour we are doing on them. This is unacceptable. I’m going to personally crack down on this using whatever method possible and ensure that citizens don’t suffer because of us. The DJB is one of the best performing organisations and has seen through a tough summer with relatively no problems. For such a high quality organization with such able officers like you, it is important that the stamp of being corrupt is never applied to you,” Mishra added.
The Delhi Jal Board will make a short-term and long-term action plan to curb corruption and submit it to the Chief Minister within the next four days.