Re: [HumJanenge] RTI helps unearth scam in Punjab

Thanks for sharing the story, which made headlines in papers of North India, some time back.

 

A number of Distt Collectors name figured out and I believe, some court had directed to recover the amount from tainted officers.

 

It will be worth while to do a RTI check - as to

 

(a) what happened to the recovery part? (I am sure nothing would have happened)

 

(b)  If any improvements have taken place in 'checks & controls' to see that the scandal is NOT repeated.

 

Rgds

 

Col IS Gill 

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 6:43 PM, Manu <moudgilmanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's a story about how RTI Act can help bring to fore the
misappropriation of funds

Cross of virtue, Circle of vice

Junior Red Cross Fund in Punjab is a favourite playground for corrupt
officials who are shamelessly pocketing the charity money

NEXT time you decide to donate your hard earned money for a noble
cause, be very careful. The funds may land up in the coffers of just a
few officials instead of reaching the affected people.Investigations
into the Junior Red Cross Fund in the state of Punjab have revealed
similar instances of misuse. The analysis of various account books and
other documents obtained under the RTI Act by Resurgence India, a
group instrumental in exposing corruption in various public dealings
including the Punjab State Red Cross Fund, shows that the Junior Red
Cross Fund meant for supporting poor students, mid day meal schemes
and victims of disasters is a sham. Huge amounts of money are
regularly diverted for personal expenditures of government officers
and purchase of items including lucky draw tickets, carpets, curtains,
furniture, crockery and postal stamps. Payments of electricity bills,
telephone bills, water bills, lawyers' fee for defending court cases
and repair of buildings are also met through donation money.

Interest collected on funds is not indicated, loans are advanced
without any keeping of account books and auditing is inept. In several
other instances the funds collected lie unutilised even as many a
needy students drop out from schools and colleges due to lack of
financial support (Punjab had the highest rate of school dropouts in
the region in 2002-05 at 23-25 per cent for primary classes and 44-48
per cent for higher classes). Needless to say, all this goes on
without any scrutiny by the concerned authorities and complete
disobeying of the Red Cross Society Rules for State/UT/District
branches under which the Junior Red Cross fund is functional.

A stooge of the government?

The Indian Red Cross Society is a voluntary humanitarian organisation
but it was established in India through a parliamentary legislation by
the Britishers. During the first world war in 1914, India had no
organisation for relief services to the affected soldiers, except a
branch of the St. John Ambulance Association. A Bill to constitute the
Indian Red Cross Society, independent of the British Red Cross, was
passed in 1920 and became Act XV of 1920.

Currently, the President of India heads the Indian Red Cross Society
while the Union Health Minister is the chairman. Such intimate
relation with the government and administrative machinery is also
replicated at state level with the Governor of Punjab heading the
Punjab State Red Cross Society. The coziness is exploited well since
the Society uses government machinery to push schemes for compulsive
collection of money and in bargain government officials siphon off the
funds meant for charitable purposes.

The Punjab State Red Cross Branch gets collections made from the
students of government schools and colleges, including government-
aided, in the name of Junior Red Cross Fund, Red Cross Camp Fees, Red
Cross Flag Day, Junior Red Cross Magazine Fund, Lucky Draw,
Scholarship Fund, Jersey & Shoes Fund et al. Owing to the huge
strength of students, the annual collections are to the tune of Rs 145
lakh approximately.

Junior Red Cross Societies have been established across India to
involve children and adolescents in humanitarian work. The Indian Red
Cross Society Act XV of 1920, however, does not mention the procedure
of esablishment and functioning of a Junior Red Cross Society. The
Indian Red Cross Society Rules for State/UT/District Branches is the
only reference document but it also fails to detail the procedure for
collection of funds. An annual fee varying from 60 paisa to Rs 12 is
collected from school and college students of Punjab in the name of
Junior Red Cross Fund. However, this prescribed collection rate is not
followed universally. While Government College of Education,
Jalandhar, charged Rs 50 from each student in financial year 2005-06,
Devki Devi Jain Memorial College for Women, Ludhiana, collected Rs 15
from each student in 2008.

Investigations by Resurgence India, based on analysis of 12,370 pages
obtained under the RTI Act, reveal that money worth Rs 14.5 million is
collected every year as Junior Red Cross Fund but only a minuscule is
actually used for the authorised Red Cross activities while a major
chunk is misappropriated by the district education officers and
colleges.Though the purpose of establishing the Junior Red Cross
Societies in schools and colleges is noble, compulsory fund
collection, use of government machinery and lack of transparency in
distribution of funds negates any underlying generosity.

Daring misdeeds

The Junior Red Cross Fund mandates expenditure on provision of aid to
poor students, sick children, victims of disasters, first-aid classes,
first-aid boxes, Junior Red Cross training camps and mid-day meal for
children besides other welfare activities for children. The funds for
the meant purposes are collected with impeccable regularity, but that
is not the case when it comes to activities. Most of the district
education officers and colleges do not undertake any Red Cross
activity at all while many others confine the activities to
participation in the Red Cross camps organised by the State Red Cross
branch. It was found that out of the 137 government-aided private
colleges, 65 did not undertake any Junior Red Cross activity since
April 2006 while 19 colleges did not implement the scheme at all.
Similarly, out of the 53 government colleges, nine did not undertake
any Junior Red Cross activity since April 2006. The utilisation of
funds at the school level could not be investigated except for four
primary schools as the requisite information was not provided. None of
these four primary schools undertook any Junior Red Cross activity in
last 10 years.

Due to non-utilisation, the funds are not only piling up but also
being misappropriated by the officials. The accumulated funds with the
District Education Officers and colleges alone are to the tune of Rs
222 lakh to which need to be added the funds lying with 20,042
government and government-aided schools in Punjab.The first breach of
trust occurs at this level. The interest accruing on the huge balance
of Junior Red Cross Funds is not mentioned in the account books. The
government-aided private colleges alone appear to be siphoning-off
around Rs 6 lakh every year by concealing the interest income.

Also while the Red Cross funds are supposed to be sacrosanct - to be
utilised only for humanitarian and relief purposes - there are
hundreds of instances of loans being taken from the Junior Red Cross
Fund for incurring the routine government expenditure flouting the
rules with impunity. Notably, most of the offices booked the loan
amount in the cash book as expenditure. In majority of the cases, no
separate record of such loans has been maintained thereby making it
impractical to ascertain the outstanding loan amount. No interest was
paid in respect of any of these loans.

To hide their misdeeds, most of the district education officers have
ill-maintained cash books even though their assistants are paid Rs 300
per month for the work related to the Junior Red Cross. The bills of
expenditure were not available in most of the cases. Even the cash
books of some of the districts were not available for all these years.
Such facts clearly indict the district and state Red Cross branches of
being grossly negligent in their supervisory role.

Such a poor maintenance of account books speaks volumes about the
supervisory role played by the district education officers. In
addition, there are significant differences in the amounts claimed by
the district education officers to have been sent to the Punjab State
Red Cross Branch as branch's share and the ones claimed by the branch
to have been received by it. Just a case in reference is that of
Gurdaspur District Education Officer (Senior Secondary). The officer
claims to have remitted Rs 18,21,221 from 1997 to 2009 but the amount
claimed to have been received by the State Red Cross Branch from
Gurdaspur stands at Rs 11,29,838 leaving a difference of Rs 6,91,383.
Unfortunately, this is just one of the several instances. The total
unaccounted amount related to remittances is Rs 19,31,373.

No checks and balances

Punjab State Red Cross Branch is the nodal office for all the Red
Cross activities in Punjab and is hence duty bound to monitor and
supervise the functioning of Junior Red Cross in the state. However,
its only concern has been to receive its share of the collections. The
branch officials have  never bothered to assess the efficiency of the
Junior Red Cross Scheme thereby leaving the funds at the mercy of the
district education officers and principals of schools and colleges.

The Indian Red Cross Society Rules for State/UT/District Branches call
for regular auditing of accounts by a practising chartered accountant.
The finance committees of these branches are meant to consider the
report of the auditors and scrutinise the annual accounts. However, no
such rule is being followed. According to the information provided by
some of the district education officers and colleges, the government
auditors did not point out any irregularities while others claimed
that no audit of the Junior Red Cross Fund was ever conducted.

The whole investigation done by Resurgence India questions the utility
of archaic set up called the Indian Red Cross Society in our times
when self has become much more important than the society. The
administrative support from the government may have been essential in
1920 when the country lacked any structured humanitarian organisation
but to make the Red Cross in India match up to its international
standing, the bureaucratic interference has to be done away with.
There can be no two ways about it.

http://www.goimonitor.com/story/cross-virtue-circle-vice