Former chief minister and Badami MLA Siddaramaiah who met taluk panchayat officials on Tuesday asked the Zilla panchayat chief executive officer (CEO) to suspend in-charge chief engineer Venkatesh Naik for negligence. The engineer is responsible for water supply to rural areas.
"He is not in office and on leave. As many as 63 drinking water units are defunct for the last eight months and not repaired," Siddaramaiah said angrily.
He called the CEO from the meeting itself and asked him to suspend Naik.
Siddaramaiah then demanded to know: "How many schools have you visited? What issues have you addressed? Maintain a diary of all these activities from now on. Don't you know the basic rule is that you have to come prepared with data for a review meeting?"
"Consider this the last warning. Government work is not child's play. We owe our time to people and farmers," the MLA said.