By IANS,
New Delhi: After bringing a ray of hope to the power-starved locals, a central government-backed rural electrification scheme in Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh district failed miserably due to lack of implementation, a report by an NGO said here Thursday.
“The survey clearly indicates that local authority didn’t make any serious effort to educate people about Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojna (RGGVY) programme,” said the audit report prepared by Greenpeace India, an environment protection organisation.
“People neither had knowledge of the scheme entitlements (facilities to below poverty line [BPL] households) nor understanding of the kind of physical infrastructure such as poles, grid wiring, transformers and meters to be built under the scheme.
“The survey finds that local corruption and poor quality infrastructure development has made the scheme a failure,” the report added.
The report pointed out that the scheme brought a ray of hope to the locals but failed due to zero implementation and lack of awareness.
“Local governing bodies like panchayats have no say and participation in the implementation of the scheme. It came out clearly that the panchayat heads are not aware about the provisions, norms and processes of the scheme,” it added.
During the survey, the report admitted that many BPL families were left out from electricity connection as the local contractor had the mandate to provide connection to only 10 percent households.
“This has resulted in corruption as few BPL households received connection and rest were refused stating reasons like unavailability of funds and their names not being in the allotment list, although most of them had BPL cards,” the report said.