Meghalaya flags 7,724 issues through social audits in three years

CORRESPONDENT

SHILLONG: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Tuesday said social audits across government schemes had flagged 7,724 issues over the last three years, of which 724 had been resolved, with action-taken reports uploaded in the public domain.

Replying to a question from VPP legislator Heaving Stone Kharpran during Question Hour in the Assembly, Sangma said the State had conducted 4,19,959 social audits over the past eight years, including 69,524 in the last year alone.

He said Meghalaya had gone beyond the Centre's mandate by enacting the Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act in 2017. The legislation enabled social audits across multiple schemes and departments.

Sangma said responsibility for acting on audit findings did not rest solely with the Community and Rural Development Department. Audit reports were forwarded to the respective departments, which were responsible for taking action against implementing agencies.

He said social audits covered schemes and areas including Jal Jeevan, Blue Revolution, power distribution and health institutions. However, consolidated figures on disciplinary action were not immediately available as the details were maintained department-wise.

Sangma said 1,491 action-taken reports under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme had been uploaded in the MGNREGS management information system and made publicly available.

He said the Meghalaya Society for Social Audit and Transparency (MSAT), formed in 2014, initially conducted social audits before the 2017 legislation expanded the mechanism to cover schemes of both the State and Central governments.

Sangma said Meghalaya was among the few States that funded its social-audit mechanism from its own resources, with around Rs 5 crore budgeted annually.

Earlier, Community and Rural Development Minister Sosthenes Sohtun said social audits had detected financial irregularities in four cases and would continue across government schemes.

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