Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, Jan 24: The Longding District Students’ Union (LDSU) today demanded an inquiry and strict action against Public Works Department (PWD) Executive Engineer Mitung Mize for allegedly “misusing public fund in the name of schemes”.
Addressing reporters on Tuesday, LDSU president Manlem Wangsu informed that the LDSU along with the Wancho Students’ Union (WSU) has written a formal complaint to the PWD Commissioner against the engineer and submitted RTI documents that show misuse of funds.
The unions claimed that funds allocated for repair and maintenance work of schemes sanctioned under the Kanubari PWD subdivision through various heads of accounts, such as SADA, DoTCL, DDM, etc have not been utilised appropriately.
Alleging duplicity of schemes by the executive engineer, they claimed that repeated estimates have been made for the same stretch of road.
The unions also said that the there has been violation of the Arunachal Pradesh District Based Entrepreneurs and Professionals (Incentives, Development and Promotional) Rules, 2015 as works have been awarded to contractors from outside the home district and even state.
Further, WSU President Pongngoi Joham said that the executive engineer has a bad rapport with the locals as he frequently remains absent from office and has even indulged in a brawl with a local, following which a case was registered against him in the local police station.
In the August of 2016, Panchayat members of Chubam, Kanubari and Lawnu had also written to the Chief Minister to take action against the executive engineer for alleged corrupt practices and had also sought his transfer.
Since there was no action taken by the government then, the LDSU and WSU have decided to pursue the matter.
This daily tried made attempts to contact the executive engineer for a clarification, but his phone numbers were either switched off or not reachable.
Members of the two unions also informed that if no action is taken within the next 20 days, they would resort to democratic forms of agitation in the affected district.
