Government laxity in executing projects faces CAG fire

New Delhi: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has come down heavily on various departments of the Delhi government and municipal corporations for their failure to effectively implement several projects. The auditor said there was an evident lack of seriousness in timely enforcement of the provisions relating to the recovery of government dues that resulted in an increase of arrears by 31 per cent at the end of 2014-15 in the department of Trade and Taxes, which is responsible for VAT collection that forms a major chunk of revenue generation.

Rapping the healthcare sector, the auditor said that the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) and Diabetes, Endocrine and Metabolic (DEM) Blocks of Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital constructed at a cost of Rs 72.07 crore remained under-utilised even after two-four years of their completion due to shortage of staff, non-installation of medical gas pipeline, and delay in procurement of requisite equipment. The auditor also said that none of the One-Stop Centre (OSC) had counsellors to provide psychological assistance to the rape victims. “Audit scrutiny revealed that despite clear directions on recruitment of staff for proper functioning of the OSC, hospitals did not initiate steps for recruitment of required staff,” the report stated.

The worst was the case with the education sector where the enrolment in Class 1 in the government and aided schools has decreased by a massive 23 per cent from 2,04,884 in 2010-11 to 1,56,911 in 2015-16. The government even lacked an effective planning for implementation of the RTE Act in Delhi. The auditor said that even uniforms, textbooks and writing material was not distributed to students of 34 selected MCD schools.

Raising serious concern over the functioning of the trade and taxes department for showing lack of seriousness in tax collections, the auditor said that the arrears have significantly increased from Rs 15,249 crore in 2012-13 to Rs 20,039 in 2014-15.

The report added that no inspection was carried out by the food safety department in 97 per cent of cases.

“The recovery process in department of trade and taxes and department of excise, entertainment and luxury tax was not initiated in pending demand cases implying inherent system deficiencies and weak internal checks,” it said.

The CAG has noted that the factory licences in the national capital were granted without ensuring whether they had prepared the health and safety policy for its workforce in 54 out of 55 cases that were audited.

Operational performance of power plants was sub-optimal, the audit report has found. “Out of planned commissioning of six power plants of 3,340 MW, only 1,500 MW Bawana unit has been commissioned while others have been held up due to non-availability of either gas or land.”

The report further added that no inspection was carried out by the department of food safety in 97 per cent of cases. “Lifting of samples was very low at four per day against 49,796 licenced food establishments and others without valid licence. The food samples were declared to be conforming to the food safety standards without testing them in totality for the prescribed parameters.”