CM says no scam in disbursement of aid to workers

SHILLONG, July 27: Chief Minister, Conrad K. Sangma has denied any scam in the disbursement of financial aid of Rs 2,100 to daily wage earners and labourers under the Chief Minister’s Relief Against Wage Loss (CRAWL) scheme as is being alleged by TUR member, Angela Rangad, who has been staging a sit-in outside the Main Secretariat for the last six days.
“The allegation is totally wrong,” Sangma clarified, adding that 2.20 lakh people had applied for the financial assistance out of whom 40,000 were rejected following detailed verification.
“Around 1.80 lakh were eligible to avail this benefit. A total of 1.50 lakh people have received the amount so far and the rest of the money is in the bank right now,” Sangma said. According to the CM, the verification of the accounts details and additional papers of approximately 35,000 to 40,000 beneficiaries is missing and therefore the process is incomplete.
Stating that he did not understand the purpose behind the protest by the TUR member, the CM said that the agitation is illegal since protesting outside the Secretariat is not permissible owing to security reasons.
Meanwhile, Principal Secretary of Labour department, GHP Raju has appealed the TUR member to use her network to identify and educate the beneficiaries to come forward and claim the money. “I would like to request TUR to facilitate the identification for welfare of the beneficiaries,” Raju said.
He also urged the beneficiaries who are yet to receive the financial assistance to come forward and claim it.
According to him, they had enrolled eight-nine banks for disbursing the money.
Meanwhile, he informed that the bank could not process and push the amount of around nearly 33,000 claimants since the names were not tallying with the information given by the beneficiary including the IFSC code.
According to him, the Labour department with the help of NIC in April this year again started verifying the names and addresses of the beneficiaries who had not received the amount.
Informing that they had sent 18,148 names after verification to the banks for depositing the amount, he informed the banks could transfer the amount to only 2,961 accounts due to the same issue.
Raju also said that the amount is deposited in the account of the beneficiaries through RTGS there are no cash transactions.