Otherwise, the Central Government may stop the next installment of the fund that is scheduled to come after July 31, department officials said.
After the Lok Sabha election, the state government reviewed and learned that out of Rs 3,315.26 crore, only Rs 1,018.29 crore has been used for developmental work. It is 30.72 per cent of the total fund of the first quarter.
According to the Panchayat department, 1,308 among 3,339 Gram Panchayats failed to spend more than 25 per cent of the total fund. The department called a meeting with all district nodal officers and the BDOs concerned.
The state panchayat department has said that the rural project tender should be finalized within the next 15 days. Besides, the unused fund must be used by August 15, directing that at least 75 percent of the money must be spent.
According to Panchayat department statistics, out of 23 districts, Bankura, Dakshin Dinajpur, Jhargram, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, East Midnapore, Purulia, Malda, North 24 Parganas, Murshidabad, Kalimpong and Darjeeling spent less than 30% of the fund.
Zilla Parishads get a certain amount of money every year as per the Finance Commission recommendation. These funds, spent to build rural roads, tubewell, and other developmental works, are allocated for addressing the people of villages and marginal areas. However the state Government is worried about the poor performance of almost all districts in terms of fund expenditure.
Identifying certain areas of problem, a Panchayat department senior official said, “poor understanding about tendering would need special training, poor scheme section needs review, and unwanted and time consuming schemes should be dropped”.
Stating that the e-Gram swaraj portal would need another training round, “PMFS (Public Financial Management System), GPMS (Gram Panchayat Management System), portal related issues – we have instructed to solve it immediately,” said the official.
“We can’t blame all the BDOs for poor work performance as they were busy in the Lok Sabha election preparations in the last few months,” the official said, adding that it had “a major impact on the plan and implementation of rural projects”.
The official said, “After the Lok Sabha elections we also faced bypoll elections in our state,” and now no time will be wasted to meet the target.