Circular No. 22/11/3/2001-DD-II (Annexure V(C))
Annexe V (c)
No. 22/11/3/2001-DD-II
Government of India
Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment
(DD-II Section)
Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi
Dated the 17th June, 2002
To
The President/Secretary,
(As per List of NGOs)
Sir,
This communication is being addressed to all the voluntary organisations receiving assistance under the Scheme to promote Voluntary Action for Persons with disabilities with a view to inform and seek their co-operation of the Ministry's proposed plan of action in dealing the issue of cost per beneficiary and number of beneficiaries to be taken as a basis for calculation of the grant for the current financial year.This letter also seeks to address certain issues relating to information furnished in the application for assistance.
2. As you would be aware the Ministry has been implementing through the medium of voluntary organizations, schemes for the welfare of persons with disabilities. Both the number of organisations assisted and the budgetary allocations under the Scheme have increased manifold over the last four years. There is still increasing demand for assistance from existing organisations with a view to provide better quality of services and to cover more beneficiaries and from newer organisations willing to join the movement of voluntary action. Ideally the Ministry would like to consider and help the voluntary action by meeting this ever-increasing demand. But this has not been possible due to a number of reasons primarily due to the limitation of available resources. Further the Scheme's edifice is to promote voluntary action and it expects that the organizations do not solely depend forever on governmental assistance but also progressively involve the community and society at large to share the responsibility. The Scheme does provide an illustrative list of cost items, the expenditure on which can be considered for funding. It has been seen over a period of time that there has been a tendency on the part of a number of voluntary organizations to claim all or most of the items listed in the Scheme in their budget estimates leading to situations where the per beneficiary cost is not found to be commensurate with the quality of service that is offered. Moreover it is matter of financial prudence that the cost of service needs to be under control and efforts should be made to optimize the use of resources whether human or physical. With this objective in view and the given ground realities of difficulties in finding additional budgetary resources to the extent/required, the Ministry plans to examine the proposals for grant in aid by rationalizing per beneficiary cost. A detailed exercise is being undertaken to arrive at a reasonable per beneficiary cost of various types of projects upto, which the Ministry could consider funding In respect of all projects the general principle of need for rationalization of items of cost would be kept in view while examining the proposals.
3. One of the ways to bring down the per beneficary cost is to increase the coverage of beneficiaries provided it is not used as a convenient tool to get increased grants under
