KOHIMA, March 26 � The Nagaland Government spent close to Rs 10 lakh yesterday just to provide supporting documents for a question put to the Rural Development Department by an Opposition member.
The question by Lampha of Congress pertained to NREGA programme implementation in the State. The documents of actual payment receipts (APRs) and work orders had to be provided including muster roll of all job card holders.
The Assembly requires all departments to provide a minimum of 200 sets or copies which are distributed to Speaker and Deputy Speaker, all MLAs, members of the press, administrative heads and heads of departments, etc.
Each set submitted by the RD department for yesterday�s question contained 14,272 pages and the RD department prepared only 33 sets due to the high cost. Each set cost Rs 28,544 at the rate of Rs 2 per copy. The cost was also cut down since the muster roll of the job card holders were not included; had it been included and 200 sets were prepareed, the cost would have been more than Rs 3 crore � Rs 3,48,78,648 to be precise.
Officials of the RD department spent several days preparing the papers and most of their time was spent photocopying documents for the past several days. This question has highlighted the need for the government and the lawmakers to not only speak of e-governance but to actually implement e-governance in actual day-to-day functions.
If the department and the Nagaland Assembly had agreed to provide soft copies of the relevant documents the cost of the �answer� would have been Rs 264 only. A compact disc in wholesale costs approximately Rs 8. Providing the information in CDs would have cost less than Rs 300, thereby saving more than Rs 9,41,600 and even the muster roll could have been provided.
A senior Govt official lamented that most lawmakers and even senior government officials are not computer proficient, leave alone IT-savvy.
However, owners of photocopying outlets are not complaining. The sudden and urgent photocopying requirements engaged more than a dozen outlets in Kohima for the past few days. Many xerox machines were hired by the RD department as department officials spent sleepless nights photocopying papers, which perhaps will never be read even by the questioner himself.