Payments to persons who did not work, people not able to get work even when available, fake entries, booked expenses not being spent, non-issuance of payslips to workers, and job cards not being updated are among the major findings of the social audit reports prepared by states for the various flagship schemes run under the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), News18 has learnt.
According to officials, some of the issues panning across states are of workers’ grievances not being addressed in a time-bound manner from updating of information boards to job cards at various administrative levels.
Ten states & UTs — Jharkhand, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Meghalaya and Nagaland — presented their reports in a day-long seminar on social audit of rural development programmes held on Tuesday under the theme ‘Re-imagining social audit with a view to bring transparency and accountability’. This was the second such national workshop organised by the ministry since 2019.
“Several issues have been flagged during the review of the schemes under the various categories such as significant differences between measurements at worksite and the values stated in the record books, expenditure not made in proportion to the actual work done and payments being made to persons without making an entry. Members in the Gram Sabha, which is the body that validates the issues that finally go up in the review, said there are instances of workers not being able to find work while some others are being paid without even registering for it,” said an official requesting anonymity.
Also, process violations, another parameter against which the schemes are evaluated, include concerns on executive agencies “not cooperating” or guiding workers adequately. “Some of the most common issues flagged are those pertaining to job cards of workers not being updated, inadequate dissemination of information relating to work opportunities, not carrying out systematic exercises to identify works, poor quality of work and work being left incomplete indefinitely. There is course correction upon the audit to an extent, but it needs to be strengthened much more,” said another official.
There are also issues being raised with the monitoring and the technical aspects of the newly introduced National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app for capturing attendance of workers registered under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
“There are several stages at which the photographs of workers are needed to be uploaded. But, in many cases, photographs uploaded are either not adequate or are missing at one or the other stages. Due to this, workers have to approach senior authorities to have their attendance registered for payment of the work done, which is then delayed for days altogether,” the official added.
Union Minister for Rural Development Giriraj Singh, who addressed the seminar, said the social audit is the spine of all central and state schemes to maintain financial discipline, while stating that there is a lack of peoples’ participation in the audits. “Jan Bhagidari or peoples’ participation must be the focal point in this process. The impact of the audit should be assessed by all concerned for taking its maximum benefit,” Singh said.
According to a senior official, several changes have been proposed for social audit guidelines for National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP). Some of the issues with the audit include states/UTs not conducting social audit of NSAP schemes regularly.
As per National Level Monitoring (NLM) reports, social audit has been conducted in 47 per cent villages of 28 states during last year. “Some state governments are not providing action-taken reports on social audit reports prepared by the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR). Also, there is lack of mechanism for coordination between rural and urban social audit units at state and field level,” the official said.
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