To make the performance of officials of the roads and buildings (R&B) department more “effective, timely and qualitative”, Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel Wednesday ordered rationalisation and restructuring of regions. With that, Patel reorganised the monitoring and supervision structure of the department into three regions of the state – North Gujarat, South Gujarat and Saurashtra. An official release from the Chief Minister's Office stated, “For more effective monitoring and supervision of state roads, instead of the current two posts of chief engineer state and chief engineer panchayat, three posts have been reorganised and restructured as chief engineer North Gujarat, chief engineer South Gujarat and chief engineer Saurashtra.” “These chief engineers will maintain the roads of their region of both state and panchayat and they will be responsible for quality of work in their regions. Not only that, they will have to give priority to quality of works by making visits of various works on two days in a week,” the release added. The R&B department has appointed P R Pateliya, Y M Chavda and J A Gandhi as the chief engineer of south Gujarat, Saurashtra and North Gujarat respectively. An order was passed Wednesday on the same. Gandhi, who is on deputation at the Gujarat Vigilance Commission has been ordered to be transferred to the new post with immediate effect. As per the release, the CM has also decided to divide the works of national highway in two divisions – north and south. It added that the CM has given instructions to assess and submit a report on how to include experts of government engineer colleges in technical audit. Patel has further given instructions to keep constant records of performance of contractor and project management consultant while doing annual review of the same. In cases of work found to have been done not properly, the release stated, action as per rules will be done expeditiously, effectively and timely. The release said that owing to the significant rise in the budget of the R&B department, its works have also been increased significantly and extended extensively. The CM, who heads the department, on Tuesday had ordered transfer of Secretary (R&B) S B Vasava.
