The Ministry of Rural Development has written to all states reminding them that they need to furnish action taken reports showing compliance to the indicators set by the ministry to avail funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MNREGA).
“The assessment of the compliance with the indicators brought in to ensure transparency and accountability in the use of MNREGA funds will be done in October,” said Giriraj Singh, Minister for Rural Development.
The move may trigger an altercation between the Centre and states as many have not complied with the indicators even now.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had in July blamed the Centre of blocking MNREGA funds. The Centre had then said the states needed to adhere to the parameters to get the funds released. “I have written to the states that we have no dearth of funds, but they need to ensure transparency and that there should be no financial irregularities. We will see the action taken report in October and assess the compliance,” added the Union minister.
The minister further added, “I have asked the states to bring in more transparency in MNREGA and for that we need to comply with some indicators such as visit by commissioners, real-time attendance, an active Lokpal, social audit, a national mobile monitoring system that is connected to an app ensuring workers reach the site and the work is being geotagged and to make WhatsApp groups. One of the WhatsApp groups should be of officers and second of GPs — of runners and winners and other public representatives. This group will have details of job cards. Everyone will know what is happening,” said Giriraj Singh.
Many states are lagging behind their targets on social audit and real-time attendance.
ON-GROUND IMPLEMENTATION
The letter dated August 5, 2022 sent to the states and UTs by the ministry listed five indicators to ensure transparency and accountability on usage of funds. However, despite reminders, many states have not acted on the directives and the ministry is likely to withhold funds in case of non-compliance.
One of the five indicators to assess the deliverance and effective work done on ground is having a WhatsApp group. It is meant to share real-time attendance of people’s representatives such as MPs, MLAs, sarpanch and others and is expected to be created at panchayat level by a panchayat secretary. It may help the public representatives keep a watch on the activities.
Southern states have made an attempt to fulfil the criteria — Andhra (12,675 of the 13,114 gram panchayats have WhatsApp groups), Telangana (12,426 of the 12,771 gram panchayats have the group), Tamil Nadu (10,073 of the 12,525 gram panchayats are on WhatsApp) and Karnataka (4,679 of the 6,017 panchayats are connected through WhatsApp).
However, while Uttar Pradesh has 59,168 gram panchayats, only 28,930 are on WhatsApp. In West Bengal, of the 3,340 gram panchayats, only 859 have WhatsApp groups. Only 86 of the 3,642 gram panchayats in Himachal Pradesh are on WhatsApp, while 290 of 14,215 gram panchayats have met this indicator in Gujarat.
Union Territories, too, are falling behind. There is no WhatsApp group for the 77 gram panchayats in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, 20 in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, 10 in Lakshadweep and 12 in Puducherry.
WHAT THE LETTER STATED
The letter stated, “As you are aware, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005, inter-alia, mandates Gram Sabha to undertake Social Audit of all the projects taken up in the Gram Panchayat, an Ombudspenon for each District for receiving grievances, enquiring into and passing awards as per the guideline issued and also made the District Programme Coordinator and all implementing agencies in the District responsible for the proper utilisation and management of the funds placed at their disposal for the purpose of implementing the Scheme, with a view to bring transparency and accountability.”
It listed the five indicators the states needed to comply with:
1. Social Audit: “It needs gram panchayats to appoint an independent director for social audit unit, the state to plan and conduct social audit for GPs, time-bound recovery of recoverable financial misappropriation amount as reported by the audit. States need to ensure provisioning of sufficient resource personnel in Social Audit Gram Sabha (SAU).”
2. Ombudsperson: “As per the existing provision of Act, recruitment for ombudsperson for all districts of your State has to be completed in a time-bound manner, if not done so far.”
3. National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS): “Real-time attendance of workers at Mahatma Gandhi NREGA worksites, along with geotagged photographs to be uploaded on NREGASoft as per Gol advisory.”
4. Area officer monitoring visit App: “All the authorised officers should do the ongoing visit as per the minimum target of visit i.e. 10 ongoing worksite visits per month for the state headquarter officers / DPC /ADPC and 15 by PO and similarly by technical officer and other officer.”
5. Whatsapp Group of GPs.
Read all the Latest Politics News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment