Shillong, Nov 1: The state government has appointed retired IAS officer, Toki Blah as chairman of the Social Audit Council (SAC), the first of its kind in the country for reviewing public services and implementation of various government schemes.
The tenure of the SAC is five years.
Following his appointment, Blah met chief minister Mukul Sangma at his office chamber in the main secretariat here on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters, Sangma said all schemes supported through the government’s exchequer will be subjected to social audit.
The Council was appointed according to the mandate of the Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Service Social Audit Act, 2017 passed by the state legislative Assembly in March this year.
The social audit council will be tasked with establishing a systematic concurrent audit system, review the monitoring and grievance redressal mechanism and recommend ways for improvement.
According to the chief minister, the Council would create an environment where there will be less room for irregularities to be committed while implementing various programmes.
“All stakeholders will be involved in it, and immediate course correction will be made. Since it is a concurrent auditing, less time will be spent for postmortem auditing,” Sangma said.
Blah said that as chairman, he would try mobilizing the public, civil societies to be part of governance for carrying out concurrent audit of public developmental works and public services initiated by the state.
“Through this process, we hope to achieve major amount of transparency and accountability in developmental initiatives and also bring in the concept of public ownership over government developmental schemes,” he said.
Blah informed that the Council would comprise of all secretaries and heads of the different departments as its members.
At the village level, the social audit committees to be appointed by the district social audit coordinator for a period of three years shall assist the social audit facilitators (members of the self help groups or non-governmental organizations) in conducting public hearing and submit report on action taken based on grievances raised.
The Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Service Social Audit Act, 2017 proposes that social audit should be conducted in at least 50 per cent of villages covered within a financial year, after which, the government will take a follow up action on the findings of the audit.
All public services like midday meal schemes, community and rural development, security, roads and transport, water, employment, health and power departments will be subjected to regular social auditing.
