The Mission for Elimination of Poverty In Municipal Areas (MEPMA) initiated action against the staff in Guntur who ‘unauthorisedly’ diverted Self-Help Group (SHG) funds to the tune of ₹1 .04 crore, on Thursday.
The staff, including City Mission Manager (CMM) Deepa, and three Resource Persons (RPs) Kavitha, Pushpalatha and Kanakalatha, indulged in the fund diversion, said P. Venkata Narayana, Project Director of MEPMA, Guntur. He said that MEPMA Mission Director V. Vijaya Lakshmi suspended the CMM and imposed a cut in the salaries of the three RPs, apart from blocking their logins.
Mr. Venkata Narayana said that the accused staff had released the amount through the Union Bank to eight SHGs, in an unauthorised manner by uploading wrong documents in the government and banker portals. The MEPMA higher officials noticed this anomaly on April 28 and action was initiated immediately, he added. “An internal inquiry is in progress and the money is being recovered from the SHGs,” he added.
Out of the total ₹1.04 crore, the banker had held about ₹20 lakh as corpus fund and more than ₹40 lakh had been recovered from the SHGs by Thursday. The remaining amount has to be recovered from the 80 members of the SHGs, he said.
