more-in A technical change in the method of payment to beneficiaries of centrally sponsored schemes, following a government order (GO) issued by the Finance Department last month, has become a cause of worry for housing scheme officials at the city Corporation, as transfer of funds to more than 1,600 beneficiaries have been delayed. According to officials here, the change ensures transparency, but came halfway through the implementation of the Pradhan Manthri Awaz Yojana (PMAY), in effect delaying the fund disbursal. The GO issued on July 11 is regarding the utilisation and monitoring of plan fund of local bodies. As per the existing system, the required funds used to be transferred from the Consolidated Fund of the State to a treasury or bank account of the implementing agency, from where it was transferred to the beneficiaries. The new order stipulates that payments should be made to the end beneficiary directly from the Consolidated Fund of the State. Data entry “The issue here is that before the payments are cleared, all the details of the beneficiaries have to be entered again in the ‘Sanhkya’ software. The PMAY data is in English, while the ‘Sankhya’ entries have to be made in Malayalam. The PMAY software displays only the last six digits of the Aadhaar number, while the ‘Sankhya’ requires all twelve digits, for which we again have to manually go back to the documents. We already have a shortage of data entry staff at the Corporation. Earlier, we could take the data of hundreds of approved beneficiaries from the geo-tagged list on the PMAY website and send it to the bank, from where the funds would be disbursed right then,” said a Corporation official. According to the official, payments have been made to PMAY beneficiaries only till May 25. Now, payments to more than 1,600 beneficiaries are pending. “The new system certainly ensures accountability. But, it would have been better if it were implemented right from the beginning. Halfway through, it is hard to switch to another system. The beneficiaries are now being forced to wait for the funds from the local body’s side,” said the official. Principal Secretary (Finance) Manoj Joshi said that the new system enables tracking of funds, as large amounts get accumulated in the bank accounts for such schemes. Losing track “In the previous system, we lose track of the funds. We do not know how much has been paid to the beneficiaries or how much has been parked in the account, from which scheme. If there is specific problem for the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation, we can sort it out,” he said.

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