Jammu, Apr 6: Putting serious question mark on the functioning of Public Health Engineering (PHE) department,  Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has observed that the department has incurred wasteful expenditures worth crores on various water supply schemes and by procuring unnecessary material.
 Many of the projects remained unfulfilled even after 7-8 years. As a result, supply of drinking water, one of basic necessity, remained luxury for people, states the CAG report released recently.   
 “Due to improper planning, inadequate funding, non-availability of key construction material, and not designing Over Head Tanks (OHT’s) at Channi Himmat, Trikuta Nagar, and Greater Kailash to the Indian Standard Code, construction of OHT’s could not be completed despite delay of more than six years causing wasteful expenditure of Rs 68.92 lakhs, besides depriving the intended consumers of the benefits of the water supply schemes,” the report adds. 
 Further exposing the functioning of the PHE, the CAG maintained that the department failed to ascertain a viable and technically feasible source of water before taking up execution of water supply scheme resulted in unfruitful expenditure of Rs 1.79 crores in Ganderbal area. The work was started in year 2003-04 and has remained incomplete till date. Initial water tapping source was river Jhelum at Khanabal and was expected to be completed in 2005-06, midway of the project after spending Rs 1.79 crores, the department after site inspection decided for an alternate source of water at an enhanced cost of Rs 3.54 crores. The CAG has raised question mark on very utility of the whole exercise spanning over more than 8-years. 
 The CAG states that PHE department Kashmir division purchased 300 (450 meters) V-Wire Hand Pump jackets at a cost of Rs 33.02 lakhs from a private firm in year 2007. These HPJs were to add to the performance of the hand pumps by way of removing suspended impurities from water.
 Till May 2011, it was revealed that only three HPJs were utilized despite the fact that division had dug 1734 deep wells during same period.
 The CAG observed that the material had been purchased without actual requirement and purchases violated the instructions of State Financial Corporation.

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