Northeast bureaucracy re-organised

[TamilNet, Friday, 05 March 1999, 22:50 GMT]
The Governor of the North-eastern Province said today that he will reactivate and chair the Provincial Planning Council (PPC) that was defunct following the dissolution of the elected North-eastern Provincial council NEPC) in 1990. The PPC was chaired by the chief minister in 1988-90.

It comprised members of the provincial council, MPs and chairmen of local government bodies of the province. The membership of the reactivated PPC under the governor will be sans the elected provincial councillors.

"The PPC will meet bi-annually to ratify the annual implementation program and review its progress" said a senior official of the NEPC today.

The PPC has been reactivated mainly as a consequence of regular complaints made by members of Parliament for the North-eastern province that provincial council authorities were neither heeding their concerns nor taking action on issues raised by them.

This will also be an effective answer to the demand by the EPDP for an interim council for running the NEPC the official said.

However, the apex body in charge of development planning in the province is the Provincial Planning Committee comprising the secretaries to the ministries under the provincial council, the heads of government departments and the Government agents in the province. Earlier the governor was it's chairman.

It will now be chaired by the NEPC's chief secretary and will function as the technical body that will assist the Provincial Planning Council, the governor and the chief secretary in matters relating to provincial development activities. The provincial planning committee will meet every three months.

Asked to comment on this development by Taminet a Tamil MP from the east said this evening, "the reorganising and strengthening of the North-eastern provincial administration under technocrats clearly shows that the government has decided to give up its proposal for extensive regional autonomy for the Tamils and instead build on the provisions of the 13th amendment under which the provincial council were set up in 1987".