After the draft CAG audit revealing “significant deficiencies” in the implementation of the UPA Government’s flagship NREG scheme, President Pratibha Patil on Monday called for sincere effort on part of local agencies to avoid recurrence of grievances.“Many a times, complaints are received that full remunerations are not being paid or payments are delayed and sometimes employment is not provided within a give time,” said Patil, referring to the implementation of NREG across the country and added, “Implementing agencies will have to be sincere and prompt to redress these grievances and avoid recurrence of such incidents.” Patil was addressing the national conference of project directors of the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs), responsible for implementation of all the rural development programmes across the country, in the Capital on Monday.Expressing her concern over the benefits not reaching the targeted population, Patil urged the implementing agencies at local level to check pilferage of funds either on account of wastage or corruption.“A lacuna in our system is that sometimes benefits don’t reach the targeted population even though funds are available. The yardstick that you should adopt when judging your own performance should be whether funds are fully utilised in time and whether they have been utilised prudently for creating durable assets,” said the President to all project directors of DRDAs participating in the conference.Underlining lack of co-ordination at the planning stage and compartmentalised execution of the welfare schemes, being run by different departments of the Government as inadequate to meet the objectives of rural development, Patil asked for effective planning, implementation and monitoring of the schemes.“Ad-hocism should be avoided and projects should be executed in a manner so as to ensure that they result in proper development of an area,” President said. “An important requirement is the convergence of various schemes to optimise benefits and avoid duplication,” she added.Patil also highlighted the importance of public awareness about welfare programmes and suggested involving volunteers from NSS and NCC for this purpose.Speaking at the conference, Union Minister for Rural Development Raghuvansh Prasad Singh stressed the importance of transparency for the successful implementation of rural programmes.“The Common man should be allowed to participate in the development process. This will bring in greater transparency in the implementation of our programmes at the grassroots,” Prasad said.
