Funds allotted to Kerala remain unspent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While finance minister Thomas Isaac has set a target of complete cleanliness for 500 panchayats and 50 towns in 2020-21, nearly half the funds the state received from the Centre under the Swachh Bharat Mission (urban) (SBM (U)) remained unspent between 2015-16 and 2019-20, as per data obtained through an RTI query.
Over the five fiscals, the state received Rs 97 crore under SBM (U).Of this, it spent Rs 50.21 crore, leaving Rs 46.96 crore unutilized. According to officials with the state local self-government department, even the sum of Rs 50.21 crore cannot be classified as expenditure as it was allotted to local bodies by the Suchitwa Mission. The actual expenditure of each local body could be far less than the original allocation, they said.
As per the data, Suchitwa Mission allocated Rs 37.38 crore to 57 urban local bodies in the state for solid waste management and the ground-level implementation of these projects is yet to be ascertained. Data regarding usage of funds under SBM (rural) revealed that panchayats in the state have spent Rs 42 crore on solid waste management since 2015-16. Even so, between Rs 7 crore and Rs 22 crore remained unspent every fiscal, it showed.
SBM was launched by the Centre with two objectives: to attain open-defecation-free status and to ensure 100% scientific processing of solid waste being generated in the country. Isaac in his budget speech laid down specific criteria to realize his cleanliness target focusing on source-level waste management.
Even with its record of poor allocation of central funds, the state budget allocated nearly Rs 100 crore for sanitation and waste management under heads like Suchitwa Keralam, Suchitwa Keralam for urban areas, state share for SBM and the like.
The budget set apart Rs 35 crore as 40% of the state’s share for SBM in 2020-21 and another Rs 35 crore for the Suchitwa Keralam scheme with 12 components. Furthermore, Rs 22.33 crore has been budgeted for Suchitwa Keralam - a waste-management scheme for urban areas with 15 components. Officials point out that the strict insistence on utilization certificates could go a long way in ensuring proper on-the-ground expenditure. Earlier data obtained through RTI showed that between 2010 and 2014, only 75 panchayats in the state had submitted utilization certificates. Even among municipalities, the performance has been below par with only 14 producing utilization certificates for the amount received from the Suchitwa Mission.