The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has pulled up the Karnataka government over the delay in notification and overall sloppiness in implementing the UPA government?s flagship national rural employment guarantee (NREG) scheme. Surprisingly, the state government had notified the scheme only in February 2007, almost 17 months after the NREG Act coming into effect in 2005. The scheme was however, implemented from February 2006.
Till March 2007, the state government succeeded in giving around 40 days jobs to just about 0.70 lakh households (of a total of 5.45 lakh households) in the five zilla panchayats (ZPs) of Bidar, Chitradurga, Davanagere, Gulbarga and Raichur, against the 100 days jobs guaranteed under the NREG Act.
The CAG found that several gram panchayats (GP) under the Chitradurga ZP and Hiriyur taluk panchayat did not issue job cards for over 2500 households even after the households had applied for them, thus flouting one of the major guidelines of the scheme and denying the rural labourers its benefits.
It is mandatory for the GPs to issue job cards within a fortnight of receipt of application from households for registration under the NREG so that in case they do not get jobs, they are paid the unemployment allowance.
The CAG also rapped the state government for its delay in constituting the State Employment Guarantee Council to regularly monitor and review the implementation of the scheme. Also, the state government did not prepare the district perspective plan (DPP) for five years to help advanced planning and provide developmental perspective for the district.
The council was set up after three months of the implementation of the scheme that resulted in, ?laxity in the preparatory procedures? for the functioning of the programme.
While the Gulbarga ZP did release around Rs 10 lakh in 2006 to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for preparation of the DPP, no DPP was prepared even after a delay of over one year. This resulted in the CAG not being able to verify the utilisation of funds released.
There was also a delay in setting up the state employment guarantee fund, which was supposed to be used for the payment of cost of material component, unemployment allowances and other administrative expenses under the scheme.
Ignoring the funding guidelines for the Centrally-sponsored scheme, which was to be done on a cost-sharing basis of 90:10 (Centre and state respectively), the state government did not follow the prescribed percentage of 10% and it varied from 4% for Bidar to 14% for Raichur.
The CAG report has also found discrepancies in allocation of funds for the ZPs. There was no uniformity in the release of funds for the ZPs, which should have been based on the number of job cards issued and the mandays projected in the action plans.