Many influential persons in nexus with some corrupt officials of the Keonjhargarh Municipality have allegedly encroached Government lands along roads for long, creating drainage and waterlogging problems for denizens.
Astonishingly, the Executive Officer of the municipality, whose prime duty is to see that no public road/ property is encroached and residents face no difficulties for water-logging problem, has taken no action to evict the encroachers even after directions from the district Collector.
A senior citizen Lal Mohan Hasda along with others placed these issues before district Collector Ashish Thakre during his grievances meeting. They brought to his notice about the problem of water-logging from Biju Krishak Bazar to Pani Engineering near the Law College adjacent to mining road.
The Collector soon forwarded the petition to the Executive Officer.
But Hasda expressed unhappiness over the forwarding of their grievance to the EO. He said they approached the Collector for the third time with the same problem. The Collector had also forwarded their petition to the EO each time. But no action was taken by him.
Hasda further stated that he had earlier also met EO Niranjan Jena and requested him for action. But Jena took various pleas for delay.
Previously, Hasda had met the Collector on February 9, 2019 and July 9, 2019 in the grievance meeting. This time, the Collector spoke personally to Jena who was present there and ordered him to take necessary action soon.
One Mansoor Alam, who is very active in social media and often bring different issues of the Keonjhar town to public notice, alleged that water logging is just one of many problems which have remained unsolved even after Collector' s interference.
He suggested the most of the problems of people can be solved and corrupt officers can't play hide and seek game with common people if implementation of the Collector’s orders are reviewed in the very next meeting. .
A total of 307 grievances were enlisted at the grievances meeting.