Karaiba Chawang
December 20
KOHIMA (MExN): The Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan, popularly known as SSA is a centrally sponsored scheme, with 25% input from the state government. It is looked after by the State Mission Authority, where the governing body is headed by Chief Minister as President and the executive body is headed by the state Chief Secretary as Chairman. The scheme is aimed at making the drop out rate to zero, and give free education to children of 6-14 years of age, under the Universalization of Elementary Education.
The scheme covers alternative education for children, civil works, training etc.
Under the scheme, the VEC is not supposed to give contract works in implementing the works, but states that the latter should carry out the works only through community participation.
“We need more people. No one visualizes it as a big scheme”, said the Director stating that there is lot of money in it.
Ironically, every time the seminar or awareness campaign on this scheme is launched, the participants are the same set of people. On many occasions, it is not the VEC members, but the public leaders who attend such meetings, said the official.
With the money directly sent to VEC, MLAs and Ministers are not so happy about the scheme, said the Director. This class of politicians want their share out of the scheme, and in most cases it gets delayed in implementation as it gets choked by ‘politicians’ interference.
With leakage rampant till it trickles down to the grass root level, the money sometimes never reaches the VEC. First, it is the Ministers and MLAs who want their share, then, comes the underground brothers, and the remaining amount for the village leaders. So sometime the VEC either get it or don’t.
Most of the officials agreed that the Education Directorate, though not surprising, has also tried to divert some amount from the scheme to the infamous free textbooks scheme of the department.
“All these put the scheme in a very disadvantageous position”, said one the officials spearheading the scheme.
The State Mission Authority officials, who said that the press should participate in highlighting the works under the scheme, unreservedly revealed that the auditors deputed by the AG office to do audit on the expenditure of the scheme had also failed to do their job as they were always after money and not for proper auditing. Although, there is no scam as such in the scheme till date, most of the officials felt that somewhere some place the money has been misused.
All the SSA officials are of the view that School Education department, which is dogged with numerous scams and anomalies such as bogus appointments and inproportionate deployment of teachers will do better only when it is directly handled by the Chief Minister himself.
“Chief Minister is a powerful man, unless he handles this department directly, the scams and anomalies will continue” said one official.
