Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said that State governments should be given the freedom to decide on schemes pertaining to utilisation of the Five Year Plan funds.
He was addressing a gathering here on Saturday after laying the foundation stone for the District Planning Council (DPC) office complex. This freedom should be granted from the Twelfth Five Year Plan as the requirement of each State differed.
The existing system prevented States from utilising the Plan fund as per their respective needs. If that freedom could not be given for the entire fund allocation, freedom for a portion of the same within the framework of guidelines should be given, he said.
Under the existing system, the government could not use the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan funds to purchase uniforms for aided school students. Aided school set-up could be different form government schools in other States, but in Kerala the aided and government schools were the same before the government, he said.
Inordinate delay caused by technical problems in the completion of projects was a bane. He said the administrative sanction for the Kollam DPC office complex was granted in 2006. It was only after six years that even the foundation stone for the same was being laid.
Even now there was some confusion over the road access to the DPC complex site. He wanted the district administration to solve the problem at the earliest and assured all support from the government side for the purpose. Cultural Affairs Minister K.C. Joseph presided over the function. Labour Minister Shibu Baby John, K.N. Balagopal, MP, MLAs, P.K. Gurudasan, M.A. Baby, C. Divakaram, and A.A. Azeez, Mayor Prasanna Earnest, and district panchayat president R. Gopalakrishna Pillai spoke.
