Geo-tagging of site location and periodic monitoring with photographs of work progress has reduced the leeway for malpractices in the implementation of the housing schemes under the Pradhan Manthri Awaz Yojana (PMAY).
The State-level monitoring team has now recommended to the city Corporation to stop the release of funds to nine beneficiaries, after discrepancies were found in their geo-tagged data.
The geo-tagging system involves marking the geographical coordinates of the site location as well as photographing of the progress of a given work. It has now been enabled for the PMAY scheme, under which funds are provided to build a house for those who already own land. The local body has completed geo-tagging of close to 800 houses, out of the 3,100 such beneficiaries in the first phase of the scheme in the Corporation.
As per this scheme, the construction work should start afresh on the land that they own. Existing structures have to be demolished before the work begins. According to project officials, in geo-tagged photographs, it was noticed that some of them had just demolished a room of their old house and constructed a new one, while in another case, just the roof was redone.
“The Corporation’s monitoring team noticed ten cases of discrepancies. We have to report the suspicious cases to the State-level monitoring team, from where a team will be sent to inspect such cases. The State team has submitted a report, asking the Corporation to stop the release of funds to nine of the beneficiaries. Not all of these are cases of fraud, as at least a few cases are owing to lack of proper knowledge about the project guidelines,” says the official.
‘Bhuvan’ app
In the current process, the beneficiaries are attached to a centralised Management Information System (MIS) as soon as their documents are cleared. The geo-tagging is done through the ‘Bhuvan’ mobile application of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The city Corporation has appointed eleven data collectors on a temporary basis for the geo-tagging process. They have been provided with mobile phones in which the ‘Bhuvan’ application is installed.
Photographs are taken at five stages of construction — before the construction, after completion of foundation, lintel, roofing, and after finishing the work. The geographical coordinates of the house are locked after the first photograph before the construction.
This prevents beneficiaries from showing house construction at a different location by others and claim the successive instalments.
At each of the stages, the geo-tagging has to be approved from the Corporation, State, and Centre, for the particular instalment to be released.
The city Corporation is hoping to finish the geo-tagging process by the end of February, for the first phase of beneficiaries.
