Patna: Districts in Bihar would soon have dedicated officials who would be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the schemes run under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).
The officials would be known as district programme officer (DPO).
"The appointments are going to be made for smooth running of schemes under MGNREGA and all the works related to these schemes would be supervised and coordinated by these officials," a senior official in the state rural development department, that is the nodal department for implementing MGNREGA in the state, told The Telegraph.
Citing reasons for creating the new post, the official pointed out that at present the district officials - district magistrate and deputy development commissioner among others - remain overloaded with works and they also find it difficult to get centralised information about status of the schemes being run under MGNREGA.
"The presence of DPO would reduce their workload to a great extent on one hand, and on the other, it would ensure better monitoring of the schemes. Also, the state headquarters would be able to have necessary information from DPO as and when desired," added the official.
As things stand now, the state government has appointed programme officers on contract who work at the block level and they report to the district headquarters. In case the state headquarters require any report it sends request to the district concerned which procures the record from blocks and then send it to the headquarters.
The official also pointed out that the DPOs would be given the task of doing regular monitoring of all the schemes under MGNREGA and general reports on a regular basis.
"As MGNREGA schemes would be their sole responsibility, it would be easier for them to focus on work," added the official.
The official said the presence of DPOs would also help in creating more employment opportunities because of better monitoring and coordination of schemes. Bihar is aiming to generate 15 crore mandays of employment under MGNREGA in 2018-19 against 4.5 crore mandays of employment that had been generated in 2017-18.
