Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, September 03, 2010:
The ombudsman office of Imphal east set up with the objective of bringing transparency in wage payments and to look after other grievances of workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) programmes is functioning only in name with no required infrastructure.
The main objective behind appointment of an ombudsman at the district level was to have a senior officer, who can work independently and free from interference in day-to-day work of the project.
Anyone having grievances against the implementing agency or facing unnecessary delays in payment of wages could approach the ombudsman for redressal.
After the enforcement of the NREGS Act in the state and the MGNERGS covering all districts in the state, government appointed an ombudsman for addressing the wage related issues of labourers in a time-bound manner.
The appointment of ombudsman in each district including that of Imphal East district was set up by an order of the state government on January 25, 2010.They were appointed for a two year term with Rs 500 per seating.
For the Imphal east district, the office of the ombudsman was allotted at the DRDA building at Porompat on June 21, 2010.Interestingly the office room for the ombudsman has no power supply.
Computers and accessories including printers were non existent.
There was no photostat machine only tables and chairs were seen.
Apart from this the required staff of two LDCs, two peons and one sweeper are yet to be detailed .
The seating allowances were not cleared till date.
The appointed ombudsman and deputy ombudsman are running the office with money from their own pockets.
The ombudsman in Imphal east is covering a jurisdiction of 56 gram panchayats implementing the MGNREGS including six gram panchayats in Jiribam sub-division of the district and dealing with complaints like non-issue of job cards, non-disbursement of wages of the workers.
So far 126 different complaints coming up from the workers have been registered by the ombudsman till September 1 and out of this 50 cases have been disposed off, an official source said.