With the government set to implement the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) in all the rural disricts of the country from April next year, the scheme, now running in 330 districts, is lagging in vigilance and monitoring. The NREG Act mandates that district panchayats monitor all aspects of implementation including registration, employment, payments, social audits and work, but a survey by an NGO PRIA says that only 40-50% of the work sites are inspected by representatives of the district panchayats in Jharkand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh. "The monitoring of work by district panchyats was very low in other states also," Manoj Rai, national co-ordinator, PRIA, said.The scheme, however, has witnessed higher participation of intermediate panchayats in inspecting the work sites. "Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttarpradesh and Uttarakhand and West Bengal showed good percentage of work inspection by the representatives of intemediate panchayats," Rai said. The NREG Act mandates formation of vigilance and monitoring committees for carrying out social audit, but the committees are still not constituted in the gram sabhas of the sampled Medak district in Andhra Pradesh. In Banda of Uttar Pradesh, the percentage of gram panchayats (GPs) with the committees is just 5.3%. However, Rajnandgaon of Chattisgarh, Wayanad of Kerala and Shivpuri of Madhya Pradesh have registered 100% with all the gram panchayats surveyed forming vigilance and monitoring committees. The figure is also impressive in 16 other districts of the survey between 50-95% panchayats forming the committees. "Though a significant improvement over the earlier data, how many of them are functional is a matter of concern," Rai said.
