Link roads to be constructed in Punjab, says Minister

Chandigarh, Apr 3 (UNI) The Punjab Mandi Board will construct 4500 Km new link roads in the rural areas at the cost of Rs 645 crores to provide connectivity with ''mandis''.

This was stated by State Agriculture Minister Sucha Singh Langah while reviewing the working of various wings of Agriculture Department, including the Punjab Mandi Board.

He said quality control should be the sole ''mantra'' of Punjab Mandi Board and any deviation from set standards of quality would not be tolerated.

He said it was surprising that the board, constructing over 50 per cent of rural link roads, neither had its own quality control laboratory nor any quality control cell to monitor the quality of works.

He asked the board to create a quality control cell at the headquarter with full-fledged Quality Control Lab so that flying squad tcan ake periodic samples of ongoing works to keep a tab on quality.

Taking a serious view of unauthorised road cuts being made by villagers and private telecom players, the Minister asked the concerned executive engineers to immediately register FIR against the guilty to discourage this practice.

He asked them to check encroachment of berms and footpaths of rural roads by farmers, saying that a road without a berm tend to cave in. He said that any laxity shown by field staff in checking this practice would be dealt with severely.

It was decided in the meeting to setup 14 new cotton mandis in cotton belt of Malwa region to provide marketing facilities to the cotton farmers. The Mandis would be constructed at the cost of Rs 38 crore out of which 15.73 crore would be contributed by Government of India.

Earlier, the Minister asked the Financial Commissioner Development, Mr G S Sandhu, to coordinate with Food Department to tackle the shortage of gunny bags. He said that procurement of wheat by the Punjab Warehousing Corporation should not suffer due to this shortage.

UNI