Govt willingly pays huge rent but doesn’t bother to renovate its property

Govt willingly pays huge rent but doesn’t bother to renovate its property

Tanveer Hussain

Budgam, Jan 9, KNT: A government building housing 3 vital offices of public importance that was gutted in 2017 has not been renovated even after the expiry of six long years in central Kashmir’s Budgam district.

The building has become a favorite spot for drug addicts while others have turned the adjacent land into a parking slot.

Locals told the news agency Kashmir News Trust that the two-storey concrete and wide government building located in Beerwa Division of Budgam was gutted in a mysterious fire incident in 2017. It had offices of three government departments — Social Welfare, Board of School Education, and Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).

After the blaze, all these offices were shifted to private buildings, and since 2017 the government has been willingly paying huge rent but not bothering to reconstruct or renovate this building.

The irony as per the locals is that they were told by the Roads and Building Department back in 2020 that a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for renovation of this gutted building has already been sent to higher officials and when the DPR will get approved, work on the building be started. “Much chagrin to us, it is the 4th year now, and still that DPR is not getting approved,” they said.

They sought the intervention of LG Manoj Sinha and appealed to the top brass to re-construct the building at the earliest. [KNT]