Assam could not meet the demand of jobs under MGNREGS: CAG

GUWAHATI: Comptroller and auditor general of India ( CAG) report for the year ended March 2012 in the performance audit of the scheme for the year 2007-08 to 2011-12 said that in last five years 100 days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme ( MGNREGS) could be provided to only 3.54 lakh workers against the demand of 88.15 lakh households in Assam.

The report observed that this was coupled with non utilization of funds optimally, non transparent process of registration and issue of job cards and non payment of unemployment allowance/compensation to eligible workers etc under the scheme

CAG remarked that state government also failed to achieve the target of secondary objective of creating durable assets to enhance the livelihood of the rural poor in future for the reasons of not following the provisions of the Act and MGNREGS works field manual.

“There were inadequacy on the part of the state government regarding adoption of economy measures in procurement of materials and maintenance of proper accounts. There were deficiencies in targeted inspection, lack of vigilance, inadequate checking of muster rolls and lack of transparency in maintaining records etc, leading to suspected misappropriation/doubtful expenditure/fraudulent payment aggregating to Rs 3.40 Crore detected in audit during the test check records,” the report observed.

CAG added that in the absence of effective mechanism in place for impact assessment of the scheme at the state level, the impact of implementation of MGNREGS on individual household, labour market, migration and efficacy of assets created could not be assessed.

CAG recommended for framing guidelines for carrying out evaluation studies through a third party appraisal for assessment of the impact of the scheme.