Patna, July 7: The performance of a number of welfare schemes in Bihar is far from satisfactory. The reports prepared by rural development department shows that implementation of some of the welfare schemes in the state is not up to the mark.

Several schemes in several districts of the state, including Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) and Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY), have not even achieved 10 per cent of their set target.

While MNREGS intends to give 100 days of assured employment to rural people, the IAY scheme provides pucca houses to the rural poor. The SGSY is an integrated programme for self-employment of the rural poor with an objective of bringing the assisted poor families above the poverty line by organising them into self help groups (SHGs) through a process of social mobilisation apart from their training and capacity building and provision of income-generating assets through a mix of bank credit and government subsidy.

According to the rural development department report for the 2010-11 fiscal, Madhubani district could achieve just 8.639 per cent of its target under the MNREGS. The percentage achievement of some other districts — Saran (18.92 per cent), Siwan (23.68 per cent) and Araria (24.31 per cent) — is also very low.

Only four districts in the state — Muzaffarpur (69.82 per cent), Bhojpur (68.54 per cent), Sheohar (58.50 per cent) and Lakhisarai (54.54 per cent) — out of 38 in the state have been able to achieve more than half the target.

In the case of IAY, two districts — Purnea (7.2 per cent) and Supaul (8.47 per cent) — could not even achieve 10 per cent of the target given to them for 2010-11. Only seven districts in the state have been able to achieve more than 50 per cent of the targets under IAY.

In case of SGSY, however, the situation appears to be a little better with 17 out of 38 districts having achieved more than 50 per cent of the target. Based on these findings, the rural development department has ranked districts in accordance to their percentage achievements in implementing the schemes and copies of these reports have also been sent to the in-charge ministers.

“This report would help the in-charge ministers in assessing the performance of their districts and also issue guidelines to officials concerned for improving their functioning for a better ranking among the districts,” rural development minister Nitish Mishra told The Telegraph.

He said the copies of the detailed reports have also been sent to the chief secretary for him to have an idea about the performance of the officials who had been deputed in the districts.

As far as rural development department is concerned, it has already taken corrective steps. The department recently transferred 340 block development officers (BDOs). All the BDOs who achieved less than 40 per cent of the target in the implementation of the schemes have not been given their post after the transfer.

Meanwhile, the ones who have performed well have been placed in the blocks that are far behind their targets.

While transfer and posting of BDOs is done by the rural development department, the transfer of the senior rank officers, posted in districts and who look after the aforesaid schemes, is done by other departments.