Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Nov 4: The State Government has diverted part of the Central Government funds of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and failed to utilize almost 50 percent of it leading to failure of this prestigious scheme launched by the Government of India to provide better health facilities and reduce infant and maternal mortality rate in rural areas.
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on Jammu district has revealed that 21 to 56 percent NRHM funds have remained unspent in Jammu district during 2006-11.
The CAG while narrating the callous attitude of the Government states that the annual plans had never been prepared at the district level during 2006-11. The State Health Society released funds of the NRHM without assessing the actual requirement leading to large unspent funds meant for providing accessible, affordable, accountable, effective and reliable healthcare facilities in rural areas and reduce infant and maternal mortality.
However, the report says that due to preparation of District Annual action plan for year 2010-11 the unspent amount in March 2011 came down from 56 percent to 21 percent.
The report says that non-formation of district level annual plans defeated the basic objective of the Mission to de-centralise planning and implementation arrangement to ensure that need based and community owned district health action plans become the basis for interventions in the sector.
The report says that in R S Pura, Kot Bhalwal, Sohanjana and Dansal blocks, Block Medical Officers (BMOs) had spent Annual Maintenance Grant (AMG), united funds and corpus funds of Rs 16.45 lakh on procurement of office furniture, inverters, batteries, air-conditions, transformers during 2007-11 in gross violations of NRHM guidelines.
However, the BMOs told the CAG that these funds were diverted as Government didn’t provide separate funds for the infrastructure. The report says that diversion of these funds indicated poor control and monitoring mechanism on utilization of funds.
The report says that in violation of the Mission guidelines the AMG of Rs 4.5 lakh was released to six Primary Health Centres that were operating from rented accommodation.
The report says that despite huge unspent funds both medical and para-medical staff was not appointment as per the mission guidelines. There were 451 sanctioned posts of doctors under the Mission while only 372 were appointed. The sanctioned para-medical staff under the Mission was 818 while only 565 were appointed.
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel