About 225 government employees have reported themselves to be under the influence of some sort of natural or synthetic drugs, in response to a Government Notification making it mandatory for all employees to report their addiction to the Government.

In the wake of the rapid increase of drug abuse not only among the youth of the State but also among the government employees, Chief Secretary Naresh Kumar held a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the issue of drug abuse and de-addiction strategy with Principal Secretary (Home) Rajeev Verma, Secretary Health & Family Welfare P. Partibhan, Secretary Tax Excise & Narcotics Y. W. Ringu, ADGP Ravindra Yadav and others.

The Chief Secretary directed the Health & Family welfare department to come out with a robust action plan to rehabilitate and de-addict government officials in a time bound manner.

He suggested that the addicts may be categorised into three categories based on their level of addiction.

Necessary counselling, treatments, rehabilitation, and follow-ups should be as per their level of addiction.

Partner NGOs for every district may be included in follow-up programmes of the addicts after their rehabilitation programme as continuing support to avoid relapse, he advised.

This task is to be accomplished without any delay and in a time bound manner, Kumar said.

Further, to check the level of drug addiction among government officials, in the first phase, the officials of the department of Police, Education and Health & Family Welfare department be randomly selected and tested, he added.

Which shall be coordinated by Deputy Commissioner, SP and DMO. Such checking shall be completed by December 2021.

CS directed the Anti-Narcotics Cell to aggressively strike the source of supply of narcotic drugs and catch key drug peddlers.