DNA: Mumbai: Sunday, 09 August 2015.
To highlight the importance of conducting social
audits on a regular basis and give it more legitimacy, residents from different
areas of the city conducted a meeting at St Joseph's School in Wadala on
Saturday. A number of citizens turned up after filing RTI applications in
different wards on the money spent by the municipal corporation on the upkeep
of gardens.
Discussing the need to take citizen audits to a
logical conclusion, RTI activist Bhaskar Prabhu said, "We will look at
taking our findings to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The idea is to show
the importance of auditing and that, ideally, authorities should be involving
citizens to audit their work instead of paying people to get it done. We can
even file a PIL." Prabhu was addressing the gathering about raising issues
on auditing the public money spent. Citizens have taken up the cudgels of
auditing the money spent by the corporation in their areas on open spaces and
toilets among other things.
The meeting was organised by the Mahiti Adhikar
Manch, which has lately taken up audit of open spaces through its social audit
and local team. "The idea is to keep taking information from the BMC to
understand whether it is working properly or not," said Mohammed Afzal,
one of those who attended the meeting. The gathered citizens went through
various parameters that they need to check when the corporation provides them
with information.
In their
previous meeting, they had shared experiences that they felt would give
substance to their audits. "The corporation has issued notices to stop
payment to contractors for the work they are supposed to do and, in some cases,
held that the amount should not be disbursed till the work is done," said
Prabhu.
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