The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has started cracking the whip on discontinued NGOs to recover the unspent funds with them and issued sterner guidelines to screen and monitor the organisations seeking funds for activities against AIDS/HIV in future.
As per the information collected by the NACO, as many as 304 NGOs have discontinued the operations after securing funds from the Centre under different projects. Out of the total due of Rs.11.99 crore, the NACO could already recover Rs.8.81 crore and the process was on to recover the rest, sources said.
“The State AIDS Control Societies have taken various steps like issuing notices, show cause notice if there is no response on earlier notices, initiate legal action etc. to recover the unspent amount. The monitoring and control of programmatic and financial activities is done regularly at NACO and respective SACS level as well as during State visits by NACO officers. SACS is conducting financial auditing through external auditors in every six months. Corrective actions are based on the programme and financial review and auditing,” sources said.
“NACO has issued detailed Operational Guideline for selection and contracting NGOs. Under the third phase of the National AIDS Control Project-III, specific guidelines were issued to select the partner organisations. The delay of recovery of unspent amount is subjected to various reasons like, delay in submitting audited reports by independent audit parties appointed by SACS,, delay or non response from discontinued NGOs after giving notices, time taken for legal actions if NGO is not taking action on notices given by SACS, settlement of funds etc,” sources said.
Out of the 304 discontinued NGOs, maximum number of such NGOs – 50-- are located in Andhra Pradesh. Out of 27 States/ UTs, no recovery has been made so far in case of Assam, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab and UP. All these States have varying number of discontinued NGOs with Madhya Pradesh having the maximum number of 23 NGOs showing recovery of Rs.60,53,234. Some NGOs were said to be even not traceable, sources said.