CAG finds lapses in UPA's rural health scheme

New Delhi: Touted as the flagship welfare programme of the UPA government, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)has turned out to be a case study of unspent funds and inadequate data, the Comptroller and Auditor General has claimed.

In a brief report tabled in Parliament on Friday, the CAG said, funds for local action through untied grants and annual maintenance grants to health centres under the NRHM "remained mostly unspent".

Creation of a parallel fund flow route through a set of societies at the state and the district level had not resulted in faster disbursement of funds, the report alleged.

"There were delays in release of funds from the SHSs to the districts and consequently to the health centres, which led to delay in implementation of the mission," it said.

The report further goes on to say that the releases and the disbursements under the NRHM at all levels, from the Ministry to the SHSs and below were equated with expenditure, "regardless of whether these had actually been utilised", adding "the actual expenditure on the mission could not be ascertained".

Blaming the planning of NRHM for its non-effectiveness, it said the programme initiated decentralised bottom-up planning. This, however, was hindered by non-completion of household and facility surveys and state-specific perspective plans.

The data available with the ministry remained inadequate as implementation of a computerised MIS was delayed by almost three years due to delay in development of a reporting format and user guidelines, the report claimed.