New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has blacklisted 200 centres run by state-funded non-governmental organisations (NGOs) for providing sub-par services and violating the standard norms set up by the ministry. These centres work in the fields of drug rehabilitation and de-addiction, homes for senior citizens and residential schools for SC\ST children.
The 200 are among the 1,200 such centres run by NGOs across the country. They receive an annual grant of Rs 25 lakh each from the Narendra Modi government.
According to documents accessed by ThePrint, 40 of these blacklisted centres are residential schools for SC/ST children, about 80 are de-addiction centres and 80 cater to senior citizens.
The blacklisting process is part of the surprise inspections that the ministry has launched to improve the quality of services.
The ministry has set up 20 project monitoring units (PMUs) to conduct the inspections. The PMUs have so far inspected 950 centres and expect to finish the process by 15 November.
“The ministry has given us a template with a checklist of parameters to look for at the centres we visit,” said a member of a PMU, asking not to be named.
“The first and foremost thing we look for is the accessibility of the centre and if it actually physically exists,” the member added. “In most of the cases, the centre exists on paper but not on ground. We also look at the records that they maintain, their state and number of the personnel employed.”
Officials said the biggest problem now is that since inspection is happening across the country, these NGOs are bringing in fake beneficiaries to make the centres look functional.
MSJE Secretary R. Subrahmanyam said, “About 200 centres have been reportedly non-functional. It was found that there is mismanagement of funds and irregularities in maintaining records. The ministry is issuing show cause notices to centres found to be non-functional.”
He added: “In order to ensure a fair process, (we) are giving them 2-3 weeks to defend themselves. If the answers are found to be unsatisfactory, contracts will be terminated. We are still in the process and are expecting to finish all inspections by 15 November.”
30 officials transferred
According to government documents accessed by ThePrint, 30 key officials at the under secretary and assistant section levels have also been transferred to other departments.
Confirming this, Subrahmanyam told ThePrint, “We are reshuffling all the officials who have been handling these cases. Many of them are long standing and they needed to be shifted. This step was taken to ensure impartial dealing of the cases under scanner.”
The ministry has undertaken this process with the help of the National Institute of Social Development (NISD), an autonomous body functioning under it.
The NISD was put in charge of selecting the officials to conduct the inspections. It recruited 20 candidates from the top 50 undergraduate and postgraduate colleges across the country.
NISD director Veerendra Mishra told ThePrint, “The selection of these candidates inspecting the centres was a long drawn process and great attention was paid to details.”
Mishra said a panel of Delhi University professors evaluated the written tests of the applicants, after which 100 of these candidates were selected and interviewed by senior officials of the ministry. Of these 100 candidates, 20 were selected to undertake the process of inspection.
“Some of these candidates are from premier institutes of the country,” Mishra said. “A process was initiated to gauge their understanding and interest in social work to ensure the selection of well suited candidates. The selected 20 were put through a 15 day long training program designed at NISD to ensure efficiency.”
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