Thiruvananthapuram: Popularising poly houses was one of the most lauded initiatives of K. M. Mani’s 2013-14 Budget, and as for hill highway it was a pet announcement of most finance ministers. But both these initiatives do not seem to have really taken off and have been generally forgotten. The State Government has, for the first time ever, launched Concurrent Evaluation and Monitoring of Schemes (CEMS) to monitor plan schemes and also to pull out projects from obscurity, evaluate its status, and put in back on track. CEMS will be introduced in six select departments in the initial stage: Agriculture, Forests and Wildlife, Water Resources, Public Works, Health and Higher Education.
Under CEMS, an evaluation team will carry out regular inspection right from inception, through the progress, till its completion. “Since it is a simultaneous examination of schemes in terms of physical outcomes, timely detection of irregularities and difficulties and problems will be possible,” a top Planning Board official said.
In the case of poly houses, for instance, the evaluation team has identified an array of issues: construction in shady and moist places, algae formation on cladding that obstructs light, unscientific designs, use of low-quality materials. Delay in hill highway was more administrative; rift with the Forest Department or KSEB.
“If the various stages of implementation of the schemes are evaluated concurrently, the inputs given and outcomes delivered can be analysed and evaluated periodically and the monitoring team can suggest corrective and remedial measures on the basis of feedbacks gleaned from implementing officers as well as various stakeholders and beneficiaries,” the official said. CEMS is proposed to be undertaken every year for select schemes under the six departments.
Lack of supervision of major plan schemes is one reason why plan fund utilisation has not picked up in the state. “Without monitoring we have not been able to achieve desired goals. This leads to a raft of issues like delay in implementing schemes, non-payment, and procedural lapse, incorrect reporting of expenditure, flawed preparation of progress report, diversion of funds, non-execution of all the envisaged components, and deviation from project guidelines,” the official said.
