IAY beneficiaries seek more funds, quality materials

A Correspondent

Chandel, Nov 6: A survey in seven rural districts of Northeast suggests that a good chunk of beneficiaries of the Centre’s Indira Awas Yuja scheme are in favour of enhancing the sanctioned amounts.

The dissatisfaction among the IAY beneficiaries stem from insufficiency in sanctioned amounts and inferior quality of materials.

More than 30 per cent of the beneficiaries in Cachar district if Assam were dissatisfied the with the lack of accountability on part of the officials while 30 per cent of all beneficiaries in the seven Northeastern districts suggested increasing accountability on part of the implementers would help in increasing the efficiency of IAY.

Improving the quality of construction and increasing the IAY amount were the two other important suggestions made on part of the beneficiaries.

The survey – which is part of the project ‘Access to Information and Delivery of Public Schemes in Remote and Backward Districts of North East India’ - was carried out by the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED) in seven backward districts in the states of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and        galand. It covered 665 000 households with a 3.7 million population in some 200 villages.

Only in Chandel (70%) and Churachandapur (30%) did the officials from IAY explain the housing design and construction technologies, the survey said.

For 70% of the households, the me of the households was announced as beneficiaries for IAY at the Gram Sabhas/Village Council meetings. 40% of the households took between 6-12 months to complete the construction. In Chandel 40 % of the houses took between 1-2 years for completion.

However, around 20% of all houses are still incomplete.

Construction of the IAY house began between 20-30 days after the receipt of the sanction order.

80% of the households started construction before the receipt of the first installment. Beneficiaries used their own funds for the same.