Saturday, August 20 2005 20:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Demanding "rephrasing" of a clause in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Bill which allows the Centre to stop funding of schemes if it suspects corruption, CPI today (Aug 20, 2005) said that officials should be held accountable and the poor should not suffer for their malpractices.

If the government sees any irregularities in an employment scheme, it is the officials concerned who should be made to pay penalty. Why make the poor suffer by scrapping whole scheme? The clause should be re-phrased," CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan told reporters today. Bardhan said mere winding up of an employment scheme on these grounds will only aggravate the condition of the poor, who depend on manual labour. "The employment schemes need to be carefully monitored by the people, the common man as well as elected members of the village panchayats should be vigilant against any irregularities committed by officials," Bardhan said. On the issue of minimum wages, Bardhan said the states should foot the excess amount in case their minimum wage is more than Rs.60 fixed by the Centre. The CPI leader was speaking at a joint press conference with other Left leaders and former Prime Minister V P Singh. Terming the clause on corruption as an "unjust provision," Singh argued that it would only serve to be a "cover for malpractices by bureaucrats".