Imphal, May 24 (EMN): Two senior government officials have been put under suspension while six other retired officials were penalised in Manipur for their involvement in the irregularities in the installation of traffic signal lights in Imphal city.
Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh made an announcement in this regard during a hurriedly called press conference in Imphal on Tuesday evening.
Regarding enquiry into installation of CCTV cameras in Imphal, the Chief Minister informed the media persons that the enquiry committee had submitted an interim report and the final report is likely to receive within a week.
Chief Minister said that two officials namely, L Sunita Devi (the then Assistant Engineer and Executive Engineer /ED-I for Phase-II) and L Kumar Singh (the then SW and present Superintending Engineer /EC) had been put under suspension for their involvement in the mess.
The Government has taken action against the erring officials, who have been found, involved in the irregularities in the installation of LED based traffic signal lights in Imphal
He said the penalised retired officials are S Lokendra Singh (the then SO, PWD Electrical), Kh Yaima Singh (the then EE/ED-I), Y Devendra Singh (the then SE/Electrical Circle), W Kesho Singh (the then Chief Engineer), M Theimon Singh (the then Chief Engineer – Mechanical & Electrical – PWD) and M Lokendro Singh (the then Chief Engineer, PWD).
The Chief Minister said the prescribed procedure, established norms and extant rules were not observed scrupulously in the installation of LED based traffic signal lights leading to willful and undue favour to a particular company in allocation of the project.
Biren contended that there was no fair competition as only one company was submitting rate and dictating the terms. It was established that the cost was calculated with pre-disposed mind to spend all available money for lesser number of traffic signals installed rather than discovering the cost by way of fair competition and existing market rates. He further said that the involved officials had even categorically admitted this fact during the enquiry.
The way procurements were made, it led to wrongful loss of public money by way of apparent over-invoice, he added.Further, even after selecting a particular company in this way, the equipments and the materials procured and installed appear to be substandard quality and capacity, the Chief Minister said.
This is evident from the substantial and repeated malfunctioning of the equipments immediately after the installation and willful change of energy/power source from pure Solar to a Hybrid source, he added.
The Chief Minister further said that the officers did not make field survey/site inspection nor prepare any ground based estimate with broad details and did not make proper entries in the Measurement Book.
