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Gap between promise & delivery
There seems to be a huge gap between the allocations made by the government and the expenditure incurred with regard to minority welfare.
Minorities welfare gets scarce attention from govt: Akbar
​Hyderabad: There seems to be a huge gap between the allocations made by the government and the expenditure incurred with regard to minority welfare.
According to MIM floor leader Akbaruddin Owaisi, a glance at what the government had earmarked for minority welfare since 2014 to date indicates that it had failed to release the amount which was earmarked for various welfare schemes.
For example, the government in 2014-15 budget had earmarked Rs 1,030 crore but it released only Rs 466.01 crore and of that it could spend only Rs 287.24 crore which amounts to around 27.89 per cent of the budget estimates.
Similarly in 2015-16, the government had allocated Rs 1,160.36 crore and released Rs 616.39 crore. But it did not spend more that Rs 478 crore. In the current budget, the government had earmarked Rs 1,279 crore, released Rs 651 crore and spent only Rs 374 crore.
The government could not even clear the scholarship dues. One of the main reasons for such a situation is because the department of Minority Welfare suffers from lack of staff and infrastructural facilities both at the state and district level.
The functioning of minorities welfare commissionerate and the minority finance commission is also badly affected due to similar problems. The delivery mechanism is in a bad shape and so far the government had done nothing to alter the situation.
There are no computers and where there are a few, there is no staff to operate them. This has adversely affected the process of verification of applications for scholarships.
Because of lack of staff, those who are managing the affairs are busy in multi-tasking. For example, the Centre for Educational Development of Minorities,Urdu Academy and Haj Committee are being managed by one single individual, said Akbaruddin Owaisi.
The state government, according to him, should have earmarked a total of Rs 1,322 crore for minorities under various central schemes being implemented in the State during the three financial years 2014-15 to 2016-17.
The Prime Minister’s 15-Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities specifically stipulates that 15 per cent of the physical targets and financial allocations under the specified central schemes are to be spent on the minorities or on areas inhabited by the minorities. However, this is not happening.
The 15-Point Programme stipulates that there shall be a State-level committee chaired by the State Chief Secretary for periodical monitoring of the schemes under the PM’s 15-Point programme.
The district-level committees chaired by the district collectors have to be functional in all the 10 districts of the State. But the state-level and district-level committees are not constituted at all.
A serious flaw is that the State government has not issued relevant GOs directing the line departments implementing the centrally-sponsored schemes with regard to earmarking physical and financial targets for minorities.
He said the MIM since June 2006 has been demanding that a special officer be appointed in the Chief Secretary’s Office for monitoring the implementation of the PM’s 15-Point Programme for Minorities in the State but nothing had been done. Even the present government had not issued GOs so far, he added.
