White Paper on misuse of village panchayat funds likely: Deputy CM

VIJAYAWADA: Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan has stated that wage dues of Rs 103 crore are pending for the sanitation workers due to non-payment by the YSRC government.

“While several of them are continuing their work, sanitation in the villages is not good. Some 21,000 workers are not reporting for work due to the irregular wage payments.”

MLAs Koona Ravikumar, Chintamaneni Prabhakar, B.N. Vijay Kumar, Gondu Sankar and Gowru Charitha Reddy posed questions in the state assembly on Friday about the cash released to Gram Panchayats from 2019-2024 from the Finance Commission-recommended funds.

Pawan Kalyan said “ manipulations” done by the previous government caused a “huge burden on us.” The village panchayats do not even have money to buy bleaching powder. There should be a discussion on this for 4 to 5 hours.

He said, “We are planning to issue a white paper on the misuse of panchayat funds.”

The Deputy CM said Rs 8283.92 crore had been released by the 14th and 15th finance commissions and the AP government had released Rs 7587.64 crore. He said the gram panchayats were facing many problems due to the suspension of funds. Since 21,000 sanitation workers are not reporting for work, this affected the health of the people.

Pawan said, “Problems arose due to the non-repair of the drinking water motor, inadequate water supply and direct payment of funds to DISCOMs without the permission of Gram Panchayats. The lives of the rural people have been affected due to the non-release of grants to Gram Panchayats.”

The conduct of elections to Gram Panchayats has been delayed by 2 years. The government has deliberately not integrated the bank accounts of the gram panchayats with the exchequer. Due to this, the funds were not released from the Centre and there was more loss.