Indian Express: Pune: Saturday,
June 22, 2013.
The
Directorate of Primary Education has no documents to show how crores of rupees
doled out as attendance allowance to girls studying in primary schools was
utilised in the past five years.
A report
given by the department in response to a query moved by The Indian Express
under Right to Information Act 2005 reveals that it has no documents to
validate an expenditure of over Rs 10 crore that is supposed to have been
utilised by the respective Zilla Parishads, since they have failed to submit
their expenditure statements for the amount to the directorate.
In view of
the high dropout rates among girls, an attendance allowance scheme was started
for them in 1992. According to relevant records, one of the main reasons why
the allowance became necessary was that these girls were engaged by their
parents in household work and taking care of their younger siblings. The other
reasons included illiteracy and insecurity of the family, child marriages and
poor economic condition. In order to reduce their absenteeism and dropout rate
and encourage their parents to send their wards to school, the scheme was
started by the Maharashtra government.
Going by the
scheme, a total of 220 working days was considered mandatory for every girl,
studying from Class I to IV, and an allowance of Re 1 was paid to the parents
of these girls as an incentive to keep them in school.
The RTI
report reveals that for the period between 2008 and 2011, a total of Rs
14,40,82,000 was released by the Directorate of Primary Education to the ZPs
and Nagarpalikas across the Maharashtra under the Planned Scheme. Under the
Non-Planned Scheme Rs 11,89,32,000 was released. But the directorate is yet to
receive documents showing the details of the expenditure.
As per the
RTI reply, “The department did not receive any expenditure statement from any
of the ZPs or NPs as proof of attendance allowance paid to schools. Without
this, it cannot be verified whether the grants released by the Directorate of
(Primary) Education was correct or not.
“The
expenditure statement of the previous year showing the details like name of the
sub scheme, grants sanctioned for the year, expenditure incurred till March
end, number of actual beneficiaries, grants surrendered and grants required for
the next year should have been received by the Directorate of (Primary)
Education before the release of the grant for the next year,” it read.
The reply further
states: “No utilization certificates (UCs) were received for grants released in
2008-09, 2009-10 and 2012-11. In the absence of utilisation certificate, how
can the department keep a watch on whether the grants have been utilized for
the purpose for which it was sanctioned?”
When
confronted with the question of absence of utilisation certificates, a senior
official at the Directorate of Primary Education said, “Yes it is true that UCs
are necessary to ascertain how the money was utilised. We have asked all ZPs to
furnish those as soon as possible. We are in the process of collecting the
UCs.”
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