New Lokpals assume charge in 19 districts of Jharkhand

Redressal of MGNREGA complaints to become faster

Ranchi, February 11: Execution of complaints against irregularities in MGNREGA will now become faster with newly appointing Lokpals assuming charge in 19 districts of the state from Friday. 

On 2nd February the state rural development department had approved appointment of the MNREGA Lokpals of 19 districts and they joined their respective districts on Friday  and started work. 
It may be mentioned that training/orientation program to MGNREGA Ombudsman was also given in the State Institute of Rural Development (SERD).

It should be noted that the main task of the Lokpal is to solve all the complaints received through various means under MNREGA at the State / Block / Panchayat / Village level by conducting a fair investigation according to the MNREGA provision, so that the determination of the accountability of MNREGA schemes can be ensured. 
The job of the Lokpal is to bring transparency in the works of MNREGA. The Ombudsman not only monitors the schemes, but will also resolve the complaints related to it. There are frequent complaints of irregularities in the works being done under MNREGA in the state, now these Lokpals will have an important responsibility to stop these disturbances. The department has now selected Lokpal for 19 districts, the remaining five districts will be selected later.

The Lokpals and their districts of appointment are as follows: Kalpana Jha- Deoghar, Bhupendra Srivastava- Dhanbad, Rajendra Prasad Sah -Dumka, Poonam Kumari -Godda, Sanat Kumar Mahto -East Singhbhum. Arunabha Kar- West Singhbhum, Sushil Kumar Tiwari-Garhwa, Santosh Kumar Pandit- Latehar, Tamanna Parveen -Giridih, Dharnidhar Prasad Sinha- Koderma, Renu Verma -Bokaro, Tapeshwar Kumar -Hazaribagh, Sudeshwar Prasad Singh- Ramgarh. Shamim Akhtar- Khunti, Vinod Kumar Pramanik Pakur, Gopi Prasad Gupta Sahebganj, Shankar Kumar -Palamu, Pushpalata Jaiswal -Ranchi, Pushpa Kumari- Simdega.

A notification in this regard has been issued by the Rural Development Department of the state. 

Significantly, the concurrent audit of MGNREGA was conducted in two phases in October last year in 1,118 of the state’s 4,331 panchayats. At the 26,000 work sites audited, audit teams found only 40,629 of the 1.59 lakh workers whose names were on the rolls submitted online. There were several irregularities and even use of JCB machines found in several places.