In a significant development, the mission director National Health Mission (NHM), Yugal Kishore Pant has decided to undertake social audit of all the schemes being executed under NHM in the State. A decision, in this regard, was taken at a meeting on Tuesday during which the In-charge of community based monitoring programme Pankaj Kumar Singh and Saurabh Raj of medical health and family welfare department, Government of India, besides Pant participated.
Informing about the social audit, Pant said that the general people have every right to know about the schemes being rolled out by the Government. He, further, said that the people are not generally aware of the schemes which would help them in monitoring actual implementation of the scheme. He informed that services of Uttarakhand Social Audit Accountability and Transparency Agency (USAATA) would be taken for social audit of NHM.
Notably, USAATA is a auditing agency set up by the Uttarakhand Government on the orders of the Union Government and Uttarakhand High Court (HC). This agency has been involved in social auditing of MNREGA and Mid Day Meal (MDM) schemes.
The in-charge of Community based monitoring agency Pankaj Kumar Singh said that community participation is vital for establishing an accountable system in any programme.
The programme management officer USAATA Manoj Gairola explained the need of social audit and its working plan of execution.
He, further, said that the community based monitoring is the best mechanism for social auditing.
Gairola claimed that Uttarakhand stands in third position in country on social audit of Government programmes. The meeting was also attended by joint director Dr Vagish Kala, Dr B S Tolia and officers of NHM.