Puducherry: There was no comprehensive action plan on the part of the Puducherry Government to utilise the funds received from the Centre for the relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction in tsunami hit areas in Puducherry, according to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India for the Union Territory of Puducherry for the year ending March 31, 2006.

Chief Minister N. Rangasamy tabled the report in the Assembly on Wednesday.

The report said 33 villages in the Union Territory were damaged during the December 2004 tsunami. The Government provided assistance in cash and kind to the affected families.

However, there was no comprehensive action plan to utilise the funds received from the Centre.

There were deficiencies in identification of beneficiaries for immediate relief and rehabilitation of the tsunami-affected people.

Assistance for repair and replacement of fishing crafts was delayed by 4 to 17 months after the calamity.

Considerable delay was also noticed in reconstruction activities. Consequently, out of 7,567 families who were to be resettled in houses constructed for them, only 100 had resettled as of November 2006. Monitoring of the implementation was poor, the report noted.

Government hospitals

The four general hospitals in the Union Territory catered to about 26 lakh patients annually. Review of performance of the hospitals revealed deficiency in specialised services due to lack of infrastructure.

Financial management was deficient as cases of over-payment of allowances and in purchase of commodities were noticed.

Contractual terms with reference to deduction of penalty due to delayed supply of equipment were not invoked and the purchase policy of medicines was not revised while quality of medicines procured was not ensured.

Vacancies in essential services resulted in the denial of such specialist services to the public and workload of the Medical Officers and technicians was heavy.

The report felt that the heavy workload was likely to have an adverse impact on the quality of services.

AFT Mills

On the operational performance of the Pondicherry Textiles Corporation Limited, the report said the Puducherry Government took over the sick AFT Mills in December 1985 and renamed it as `Pondicherry Textiles Corporation Limited.'

The company, which was earning profits up to 1992-93, started incurring loses from 1993-94. The accumulated losses of the company rose from Rs. 159.64 crore in 2001-2002 to Rs. 250.44 crore at the end of 2005-06, which wiped out its entire paid up capital of Rs. 230.04 crore.

Low capacity utilisation and failure to achieve norms of efficiency resulted in production loss of yarn and led to extra expenditure of Rs 10.06 crore on yarn procurement from outside at a higher rate as compared to variable cost of in-house production during the five years ending on March 31, 2006.

The failure to achieve installed capacity and norms for efficiency in cloth output resulted in production loss of 858.86 lakh metres of cloth during the five years ending on March 31, 2006.

The report said that improper production planning resulted in avoidable extra expenditure of Rs. 17.84 crore.

Out of Rs. 28.11 crore received (including Rs 5.76 crore realised on sale of land) for modernisation programme, the company spent only Rs. 10.99 crore and utilised the remaining amount of Rs 17.12 crore to meet its working capital requirements.

As the modernisation programme was not completed, the Rs 10.99 crore spent had not yielded the desired results and the objectives of modernisation remained unfulfilled, the annual audit report added.

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