Chandigarh, Apr 27 (IANS): The Haryana government will initiate social auditing of 10 schemes of Social Justice, Empowerment, Welfare of Scheduled Castes and Backward Classes and Antyodaya (SEWA) Department to ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation of government schemes and programmes, it was announced on Thursday.

The other schemes, including the National Social Assistance Programme, the 15th Finance Commission Grants, and the Swachh Bharat Mission schemes are also in the upcoming plan and will be conducted in this fiscal.

This was stated by Chief Secretary Sanjeev Kaushal after presiding over the meeting of second governing body of the Haryana Society for Social Audit for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) here.

He said the director of social audit unit will prepare an annual calendar for conducting audit of different development schemes.

In the meeting, it was decided to constitute a three-member committee headed by Sub Divisional Officer (Civil) at the district level to strengthen the social audit unit.

The other members of the committee will be Block Development and Panchayats Officer and the SDO of Panchayati Raj. The committee will identify the village resource persons to conduct the audit. The governing body approved the proposal to increase the honorarium of village resource persons from Rs 500 to Rs 650 per working day, including TA and DA.

Additional Chief Secretary (Rural Development) Anil Malik said the social audit of MGNREGA scheme is being conducted with the help of community-based organisations and other local NGOs to ensure accountability and transparency.

The social audit unit has identified and trained 824 village resource persons from all 22 districts of the state.