Environment Ministry to revamp regional offices: Prakash Javadekar

NEW DELHI: The Environment Ministry has decided to revamp all its regional offices across the country to empower and strengthen them for better compliance of laws, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said today.

The ministry has called a review meeting of all the 10 regional offices where suggestions will be invited for augmenting their capacity and effectiveness.

"We are reviewing the functioning of regional offices. They play a very important role as they the arms of implementation of laws on air and water pollution, forest clearance and many other subjects," Environment Minister Javadekar told reporters here after releasing the 10th edition of Directory of Environment NGOs.

He said that the offices were not empowered earlier resulting in delay of environment clearances.

"They were earlier not empowered and very badly structured. We are revamping the whole system and giving them strength by augmenting their staff strength, their resources and making them a real effective tool and major instrument of implementation of the (environment) laws," he said.