Girwar
Social Audit
May 9th 2006
From the experience drawn from Valota Panchayat, Jan Chetna Sansthan planned
to conduct a social audit in Abu Road and Girvar Panchayat was selected
for this purpose.
This decision followed a social audit of around Rs 11 lakh worth of public
development works in Girwar Panchayat, Abu Road block, Sirohi district
today which uncovered many irregularities concerning wage payments made
to labourers on various works, both in the form of cash and wheat, besides
other forms of fraud. According to the evidence presented by the villagers
themselves, 6977 kilograms of wheat that was rightfully theirs in the form
of wages has simply not reached them.
At the end of this exercise, which is one of the first to be held since
the passage of the Right to Information Act 2005, the Abhiyan resolved
to strongly oppose the Centre�s move to notify a uniform wage of
Rs 60 for all states under the EGS. It decided to demand that the �task�
prescribed under the EGS in order to earn the daily wage be reduced. It
was also decided that a demand for part-payment of wages in grain under
the EGS would be put across. With this, the Abhiyan carried forth the spirit
of the recently held mass public monitoring initiative held recently in
Dungarpur.
The Girwar social audit was organized by a local non-governmental organization
Jan Chetna Sansthan (JCS) in liaison with Center for Equity Studies (CES),
Jaipur, with support from National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad.
Residents of the village, along with members of JCS had applied and obtained
the records � muster rolls, bills, vouchers and sanctions – pertaining
to 17 development works under various schemes undertaken in 2004-05 and
2005-06 using the Right to Information Act 2005. After a door-to door verification
process in the last few days, a public hearing took place on May 9th 2006
attended by hundreds of residents from Girwar Panchayat and as many as
18 neighbouring Panchayats besides many representatives of organizations
from the state and outside.
Labourers who had worked in a middle school building in Girwar testified
to the fact that the entire work had been done through contractors. The
contractors had brought labourers from outside the Panchayat. Moreover,
many women came forward and asserted that they got paid only Rs 40 as daily
wage, compared to Rs 50-60 for men, which is in any case much lower than
the minimum wage of RS 73. Similarly, labourers testified that a �Sarvajanik
Chabutra Nirmaan� in Pisra Phali under the SGRY scheme was also done
through contractors.
Huge irregularities came to light concerning payments made in the form
of wheat and fudging of muster rolls. In works, which were given on contract,
labourers had not received any wheat at all. In the same chabutra nirmaan,
Pisra Phali and in a watershed work in Dundai Phali, women workers stated
that they had got coupons but the stock register which the ration dealer
was asked to bring to the public hearing clearly showed that someone else
had lifted the grain. Cases of workers who had gone to work but their names
were not there on the muster rolls were also presented.
Instances of the Sarpanch offering to build houses on behalf of Indira
Awas Yojna beneficiaries and giving such work on contract to his people
also came to light. Harish Ramu of Girwar testified that he had received
only 4 boris of wheat when he actually should have got 21 boris under this
scheme.
The findings of the social audit were presented in front of a panel which
included social activist and member National Campaign for People�s
Right to Information (NCPRI) Aruna Roy of MKSS, S.K. Mittal, District Collector,
Sirohi, Ramesh Nandwana of Jungle Jamin Aandolan, P.L.Meemrot of Dalit
Adhikar Kendra, Ashok Singh of Indo-Global Service Society, Bhanwar Singh
Chandana of Astha Udaipur, ACEO, Sirohi district Ramniwas Jat, Pradhan
and BDO of Abu Road block and Bhimaram sarpanch of Girwar Panchayat. Damodaran
Kuppuswamy of Action Aid Delhi and P.C Jain of Rajasthan Vidyapeet were
also invited to be on the panel.