State identifies 91 training centres that have not submitted funds' utilisation certificates

kolkata: The state government has identified 91 vocational training centres that have not submitted accounts and expenditure details of different grants provided for vocational education and training programmes.

This comes when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had ordered an internal inquiry into the expenditure of the Technical Education and Skill Development department with complaints of some training centres not conducting programmes despite release of funds.

Banerjee gave the direction while holding a high-level meeting on Monday to prepare a roadmap for further improvement in skill development training programmes.

The directorate of Vocational Education and Training wrote to all concerned on June 18 stating that "the directorate has provided repeated chances for submission of correct utilisation certificates through notifications or reminders or hearing and phone calls for the vocational training centres since a long period of time".

It has also been stated that 17 training centres are "long pending manual utilisation certificate defaulter" while around 74 are "long pending online utilisation certificate defaulter".

"Surprisingly, these vocational training centres are submitting online monthly requisition for remuneration or teachers or instructors on a regular basis without failure," the document reads.

Directing the head of the institutions to "explain with proper justification about parking of government funds and why vocational education and training programmes will not be kept in abeyance in their training centres from the beginning of next academic session", the last chance of submitting utilisation certificates has been given to all 91 training centres.

The 17 training centres that are "long pending manual utilisation certificate defaulter" have been given the last chance of submitting the "correct manual utilisation certificate" by July 12.

While 21 centres that are defaulter upto June 2020 can submit the "online utilisation certificate in iOSMS portal" from July 2 to 6. Similarly, the remaining 23 training centres that are defaulters for July to September 2020 can submit the same through the portal from July 8 to 12.