Chief engineer to get DLR control

Concerns that Irrigation Dept re-organisation will hurt Directorate.

LAHORE:

The Irrigation Department has decided to place the Directorate of Land Reclamation, an attached department under the irrigation secretary, under the administrative control of the research chief engineer, The Express Tribune has learnt.

In June 2011, a functional review of the Irrigation Department under the Punjab Resources Management programme was carried out to seek ways to improve its operational, functional and financial efficiency.

The study proposed that the DLR and physics laboratory of the Irrigation Research Institute (IRI) be merged and placed under the administrative control of the research chief engineer. The research chief engineer already heads the IRI, which seeks to address water logging and salinity issues in canals.

The chief engineer has initiated a summary for the merger of the DLR and IRI under his administrative control and the Irrigation Department has forwarded it to the chief minister for approval, an official said on the condition of anonymity.

However, the move is not being welcomed by the director of the DLR, Rana Muhammad Iqbal, an Irrigation Department official said. He said that the director and Irrigation Secretary Irfan Elahi had clashed over administrative issues in the recent past. He said the director was unhappy at being placed under the chief engineer, when previously he reported directly to the secretary. “The merger might hurt the DLR’s performance as it would have to work under more officers,” said the official. The IRI was restructured in 2001 and the DLR, previously part of the institute, was placed under the direct control of the Irrigation Department secretary and given the status of an attached department. The DLR and its manpower of over a thousand employees were tasked with monitoring groundwater.

Another Irrigation Department official said the merger would be beneficial as it would prevent duplication of tasks and create an extra level of monitoring over the DLR.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2012.