DC Vandana Dadel at Town Hall, Giridih, on Wednesday. Pix: Shahnawaz Akhtar

Giridih, June 3: The UPA government’s perform-or-perish principle is being followed to the letter in Giridih.

In an unprecedented move, deputy commissioner Vandana Dadel has put a freeze on the salary of more than 500 state employees associated with the Centre’s showpiece job schemes under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).

At a meeting with members of the district co-ordination committee to review development work here, Dadel today directed her subordinates not to release salaries of all employees of the NREGA cell because their NREGA contribution were “dissatisfactory”. Employees of other departments (forest, panchayati raj etc), also associated with the job scheme, face the same penalty.

Talking to The Telegraph, Dadel said the scheme was suffering because of laggard officials. “We had to take action to expedite implementation of projects under NREGA,” she said. Deputy development commissioner G.S. Minz said the salary freeze would continue till further orders. Those “punished” include 12 block development officers (BDOs), 11 assistant engineers, 11 junior engineers, 18 block programme officers, eight accountants, six computer operators, around 300 rozgar sevaks and 150 panchayat sevaks.

The block programme officers, accountants, computer operators, and rozgar sevaks were especially recruited for proper implementation of the act while BDOs and panchayat sevaks were associated with the project. The only one spared was Jamua block development officer Jyoti Jha, whose contribution towards NREGA was found satisfactory.

At the beginning of the current financial year, Giridih had an opening balance of Rs 93 crore from the previous year under the NREGA account. Dadel had set a monthly expenditure target of Rs 40-50 lakh for each block. But after studying reports she found that every block (except Jamua) showed an expenditure of only Rs 4-5 lakh.

Moreover, Gawah BDO Mithilesh Sharan’s report showed that no work under the NREGA had taken place in any village of the block. Minz said during the past month, the Gawah BDO had not visited the block, but stayed put at the district headquarters.

Besides the job guarantee scheme, projects under the Indira Awas Yojana and Sampurna Gramin Swarojgar Yojana were discussed at the meeting. Gawah, Deori and Bagoder BDOs were held responsible for the tardy progress.

Sub-divisional magistrate Iqbal Alam, who also attended the meeting, warned block officials that soon he would visit every block and, if irregularities were detected, FIRs would be filed against the accused and they would be put behind bars.

Senior officials observed that with funds remaining unused and jobs not being sanctioned, the migration of workforce could not be stopped.