Shillong, June 25: The Hynniewtrep Youth Council (HYC) president, Roy Kupar Synrem on Tuesday lodged a complaint with the Meghalaya Lokayukta demanding an inquiry into irregularities in the procurement of corrugated aluminium roofing sheets by the Housing department.
The HYC president has submitted the complaint to the office of the Secretary of the Meghalaya Lokayukta, R Rapthap.
Talking to reporters after submitting the complaint, Synrem said that he submitted his complaint as per Section 20 of the Meghalaya Lokayukta Act, 2020 against the Director of the Housing Department who was responsible for issuing the tender in February 2022 for procurement of the roofing sheets.
According to him, the Meghalaya Lokayukta has got its own inquiry wing to probe into his complaint.
He also reminded that the HYC last week had submitted a petition to the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister and Housing Minister on their findings into the irregularities of purchasing of the CGI sheets.
Earlier, the HYC had urged a recall of a recent order for distributing corrugated aluminium roofing sheets to various Community & Rural Development (C&RD) Blocks across Meghalaya. The petition calls for immediate action regarding the quality of the supplied materials.
According to Synrem, they had received multiple complaints about the poor quality of the aluminium roofing sheets distributed to beneficiaries in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills.
He further informed that conducted an inquiry and visited several C&RD Blocks to verify these complaints.
“We discovered that sheets supplied by Hariana Iron Works Pvt. Ltd, Kolkata, are substandard and not suitable for use,” Synrem stated.
According to Synrem, the Directorate of Housing, Meghalaya, had ordered sheets with a thickness of 0.45 mm, which is the standard for good quality. However, the supplied sheets are only about 0.25 mm thick.