Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Government planning to monitor schemes at field level

CHENNAI: After a relatively quiet two years, the State administration is preparing to firmly push its senior officers to work harder.

The issue: the new schemes launched by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government needs tighter field-level monitoring and senior officers are refusing to move out of Chennai often enough.

A recent study that looked at more than a dozen departments revealed that nearly a third of the heads of departments did not even bother to get out of Chennai once a month. Only one came close to fulfilling his mandated tour obligation.

Heads of departments and Secretaries to government, depending on the nature of their interaction with the public, have to set apart a specified number of days each month for tour.

“It is true that the government has launched so many new welfare schemes for people. But it fails miserably in monitoring and taking corrective action early,” remarks a senior officer. This effectively means that monitoring of schemes at the field level is restricted to – in most cases – getting reports from them and passing them on as actual on-the-ground situation. The Chief Minister’s office also has a designated officer and a few officers who monitor department and schemes.

But the officer has been assigned other important tasks – apart from monitoring – and the office itself is a small set-up, inadequate to monitor all departments.

“You can sit in Chennai and make any number of schemes. But you cannot sit here and make sure that they reach the intended beneficiary in Gudalur or Kollencode,” said another officer.

“You have to be after the district administration. You have to keep the pressure on them to deliver. You can do this only if you know at what places in the field you will encounter trouble,” he added.

With the new Chief Secretary taking an active interest in the issue, the tour profile of the heads of departments and the Secretaries to government is set to change. The new thinking is that the departments that have more interface with the people need to have more interaction and monitoring at the field level. The earlier drawn-up mandatory tour schedule is being revisited to make it more “realistic” and the government is firm that senior officers will have to stick to the new schedule of tours.

Or else explain why.

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