The former Union Minister and Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha M. Mallikarjun Khage has directed Deputy Commissioner Khushboo Goel Chowdhary and Chief Executive Officer of the Zilla Panchayat Vikas Suralkar to take all steps to create more jobs and generate man days under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to ensure that all beneficiaries are offered jobs properly.
Chairing a review meeting of the District Development Co-ordination and Monitoring Committee here on Tuesday, Mr. Kharge took the zilla panchayat officials to task when they could not explain how many jobs had been created for unemployed rural people and why grants earmarked in 2015-16 and 2016-17 had not been utilised properly.
Mr. Kharge, who expressed concern over the lack of basic facilities in the rural areas, advised officials to come out with concrete steps and take up development works such as construction of approach roads to tandas and hamlets under MGNREGA.
He also directed Mr. Suralkar to prepare a list of civic works to be taken up under the scheme and conduct surprise visits to ascertain the fact on the field when officials gave details stating that Rs. 101.18 crore was the labour budget in 2015-16, of which they had spent only Rs. 55 crore.
In 2016-17, they had so far spent Rs. 40 crore out of Rs. 82.07 crore.
Chaitanya Yojana
The banks concerned should release amount to beneficiaries of the Rajiv Gandhi Chaitanya Yojana immediately after receiving applications from the departments as per the list of beneficiaries for 2016-17.
Mr. Kharge also directed the officials of the Rural Drinking Water and Sanitation Division to black list contractors who had failed to complete the work under multi-village drinking water schemes when officials said that pipelines laid for Anur (K) multi village scheme were damaged and the contractor had refused to replace the damaged ones. He also promised to release Rs. 15 lakh from the MP’s fund to take up fresh work immediately.
He reviewed the development works taken up under several departments such as Education, Agriculture, Women and Child Development, Industrial Development, National Highways, Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board, Mid-Day Meal, Swachh Bharat Mission, Schemes for Old Age Pension, Sandhya Suraksha, Destitute Widow Pension, Physically Handicapped Pension and gave instructions for the effective implementation of government programmes.
Mr. Kharge asked the officials to ensure that the grants released for the programmes did not lapse and were utilised properly.
Baburao Chinchansur and Raja Venkatappa Naik, MLAs, Basareddy Anpur, president of Zilla Panchayat, and officials of various district-level departments were present.
