Meeting okays shifting of eastern zone offices soon

ITANAGAR, Jun 22: Arunachal Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein on Thursday convened a meeting of the group of ministers and chief engineers of eastern zone to work out modalities for early shifting and functioning of their respective zonal offices.

The meeting follows the state government’s decision to make the offices of the East and West divisional commissioners function from their respective headquarters.Mein thanked Chief Minister Pema Khandu for his step towards equitable development of all the regions of the state, a PRO report said.

The deputy CM said the divisional commissioners, functioning from the state capital, should ideally have moved out long ago.

“The devolution of administrative and financial powers to the two divisional commissioners by the government will meet the objective of federal system of governance which aims at equitable development of all the regions of the state. It will help the government percolate down to the people besides bringing in better administration,” the deputy chief minister said.

He said that the office of the divisional commissioner (East) has to be shifted to its divisional headquarters at Namsai for immediate functioning. The zonal zonal offices of line departments too have to be shifted in the eastern zone as per convenience and availability of infrastructure.

The members present in the meeting unanimously decided to facilitate immediate functioning of their zonal offices and to shift the office of DIG (East) to Khonsa, headquarters of Tirap district.

Decisions were also taken to clearly define the jurisdiction of eastern zone by the departments concerned and the chief engineers were also asked to submit the estimates of their minimum requirement of manpower and infrastructure within a week.

The members also decided to contribute fund from their available resources for creation of infrastructure for office buildings and accommodation of the staff in addition to the funding and support from the state government.

Ministers including Kamlung Mossang (WRD), Wangki Lowang (Agriculture and DoTCL), Honchum Ngandam (Education), Alo Libang (PR & RD), Dr Mohesh Chai (Animal Husbandry & Vetrinary and Diary Development), Chief Advisor to CM Wanglin Lowangdong, Planning Parliamentary Secretary Chow Zingnu Namchoom, and chief engineers of the Eastern Zone of various line departments were present in the meeting, the report added.