AP bureaucrats to regularly tour villages; make night halts

All bureaucrats in Andhra Pradesh will henceforth have to tour villages and also make periodic night halts to "get a feel of ground-level realities" and to make the state government's 'People First' concept effective.
The bureaucrats, from the rank of special chief secretary to district Collector as well as divisional and mandal level officers, will have to undertake field visits for "effective monitoring of the rural development and welfare programmes for plugging leakages and also for efficient delivery of services at the village level", Chief Secretary Dinesh Kumar said in an order today.
"Under People First concept, the government is consciously promoting people-centric governance.

"It calls for field visits by senior officers down the line to get a feel of the ground-level realities to enable a direct feedback to the government for taking corrective measures," he said, issuing a set of instructions to the bureaucrats.
As per the order, special chief secretaries, principal secretaries and secretaries have to visit villages for at least two days a month with mandatory night halt in a village for interacting with its residents.
The heads of departments will have to tour the villages seven days a month and make two night halts while the district collectors are required to tour villages three days a week.

The district collectors will have to spend a night in a village every week.

The information technology department has been asked to develop a special website wherein the field visit reports of the respective officers will be posted, according to the chief secretary's order.
"Each visiting officer should take stock of ground realities on the implementation of government programmes and policies and review all such programmes at the village level, irrespective of the department they represent," Kumar said.
"This promotes inter-disciplinary thinking, cross- cutting analysis and recognise the vital link between different programmes. Any impediment in implementation should be highlighted for correction so as to make implementation effective."

The visiting officers should focus on quality of assets created, adherence to implementation schedule, flow of funds, proper utilisation of funds and achievement of physical and financial targets, areas of convergence achieved, impact created and peoples' perception and happiness, he added.
The planning department in the state Secretariat would analyse the field reports and submit a consolidated report to the chief secretary every month, the order said.