Dimapur, May 18 (EMN): The government of Nagaland in October 2017 suspended three officers named in a case of misappropriation of money meant for Inclusive Education for the Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS) under the state’s School Education department – a case which is currently under trial in the court of Special Judge, Vigilance Commission.
This information, among others, were contained in a response from the state’s Vigilance Commission to a Right to Information (RTI) query filed by Diethono Nakhro, a member of the National Committee on Rights of Persons with Disability and a former editor of Eastern Mirror. She made the documents available to the local press on Friday.
In all, the Vigilance Commission has named six persons including a former minister and his son. “Investigation established prime facie case against 6 persons: 4 govt. servants (sic), 1 ex-minister and 1 private (sic) person, son of the former minister, for misappropriation of Rs 5.16 crores IEDSS scheme money meant for disabled students.
“During investigation an amount of 40,77,650/- (Rupees forty lakh seventy seven thousand six hundred fifty) IEDSS scheme money was recovered from different officials. The case has been chargesheeted in December 2017 and is now under trial in the court of Special Judge, Vigilance Commission,” according to the RTI document.
The six persons named in the case are: Dr. Chubanungsang, joint director and project director of IEDSS scheme; Imtionen, assistant programme officer of IEDSS; Y Daniel Lotha, junior education officer; B Tingshem Konyak, retired director of School Education; Nyeiwang Konyak, former minister of School Education; and his son Sammy Konyak, ‘class-I govt. registered contractor and supplier’.
The first three officers listed above were placed under suspension by the government in October 2017 and ‘sanctions were accorded for prosecuting them in the court of law for misappropriation of IEDSS scheme fund’.
According to the document, the union Ministry of Human Resource Department had released INR 24,15,63,764 to implement IEDSS scheme in Nagaland during 2011-12 and 2012-13 from which the state government had realised INR 12,79,50,000 to the School Education department.
The amount was shown in School Education department’s record as having used for: salary and allowances for 391 Special Education Teachers (SET); salary for 212 Helpers; construction of 60 resource rooms at 60 GHSS/GHS; purchase of various equipments and materials for the Disabled; disbursement of stipends and allowances to 4047 Disabled beneficiaries; salary for staff under IEDSS cell; and conduct of various training programmes in the state and districts levels.
“However, investigation revealed the following: out of 4047 disabled students shown by the department as beneficiaries, only 1430 disabled students were genuine and the rest were bogus; out of 391 SET shown appointed by the department, only 360 were genuine teachers, 19 were bogus and 12 had resigned. Salaries were released for all 391 teachers; Out of 212 Helpers shown appointed, only 63 were genuine and salary for the rest 169 helpers was misappropriated/misused; Out of 60 resource rooms, only 6 sub-standard resource rooms were constructed; out of 4047 disabled students listed as beneficiaries, only 68 received stipend/allowances but not in full, and fund; equipments and materials were not procured in full but were shown as procured and issued to all the districts and schools and fund was misappropriated; and money was not paid in full to the district education officers for conduct of various programmes in the districts,” the commission discovered.
Also, the commission had recommended the School Education department four steps out of which the former has implemented only one: to consider services of the genuine SET for extension or re-appointment.
“Now that the investigation is completed and culpability has been established, it is the demand of people with disabilities of Nagaland that the case is swiftly dealt with and exemplary convictions handed out to those responsible to serve as deterrent to future similar crimes. We also expect the government to lay out a plan to fully recover the stolen funds from the culprits,” Nakhro stated.
