Chief Minister Harish Rawat has reduced the ground water surcharge by 3.5 percent, which means that now users will have to pay only 1.5 per cent instead of five per cent. Now onward industrial units, building construction companies, Government buildings and other commercial institutions that have been harnessing ground water, will have to pay water surcharge. The Chief Minister said this while convening a meeting with senior officers of different departments to increase the financial resources of the State Government.
Chief Minister said that the Union Government had changed funding pattern between the State and Centre, which is why the State will have to find its own financial resources. As the State will also have to take care of its poor people so the surcharge should be reduced by upto 1.5 percent in place of five percent. The annual increase in water surcharge would be 15 percent but consumer having four points will have to pay mere nine percent water surcharge increment. He also advised the Jal Sansthan and Peyjal Nigam to reduce their project costs by 10 percent adopting latest technology. Gravitiy based drinking water projects should be constructed as far as possible. He also instructed Uttarakhand Jal Vidyut Nigam limited and Jal Sansthan to prepare upto two megawatt micro hydro power projects by involving Gram Panchyat at four to five places. Irrigation department should prepare hydro power project upto one megawatt in some places as well.
He also instructed to make sure that water surcharge impact is not transferred to the electricity consumers. They were also told to study how to collect resources from mobile phone towers, optical fibre and cable industries as well. The tax collection system should be computerised. Power department should decrease its transmission loss by one percent annually. The state government is going to implement Jammu and Kashmir model by collecting water surcharges from the hydro power projects.
Reviewing the mining department, CM said that by imposing restrictions on the retailers, state government revenue had come down and construction material cost had increased as well so a retail license policy should be prepared for mining.
A strong system should be developed for checking illegal mining and frequency of checking of inward and outward registers should be increased. Officials were told to consider how to develop strong vigilance system on mining at Tehsil level. They were told to empower police along with RTO to penalise the truck carrying construction material above their limit. Strong surveillance system should be developed at major points and more power should be given to the forest department so that they can put a check on illegal mining within their jurisdiction. The officials were told to consider how to allow quarrying for stone and slate as minor ores, how to use small and large boulders from rivers in home construction as a substitute for marble or granite after polish.
The meeting was attended by MlA Navprabhat, chief secretary Rakesh Sharma, adtional chief secretary S Raju, principal secretary Umakant Panwar, secretaries Anand Vardhan, Amit Negi, R Meenakshi Sundarm and others.