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| Alleged embezzlement of CAMPA funds goes on unabatedly | | |
Javaid Naikoo
SRINAGAR, July 21: Despite huge sums of money being spent under CAMPA scheme to recover encroached land and bring back charm to the plundered forests, nothing concrete has happened on ground.
According to sources, huge embezzlement of funds under CAMPA has been going on unabatedly due to the alleged official nexus.
Minister for Forests, Ecology and Environment, Mian Altaf, in a high level meeting of officers convened recently, was informed that about Rs 59 crore were spend during last financial year on various programmes taken up under CAMPA scheme in the state and around Rs 49.50 crore have been earmarked for current fiscal year. Social Forestry department has also incurred Rs 6 crore under the scheme during last financial year.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one top official of the Kashmir Forest Department revealed to Early Times that 'CAMPA is like MGNREGA of Forests department in which despite huge sums of money are sanctioned every year but the purpose of recovering illegally encroached land and bringing back charm to the plundered forests could not be fulfilled by this scheme due to the alleged ill-planned measures and deep-rooted corruption prevailing within the system.
"At present around 4,000 acres of forest land is still under the illegal possession of land mafias. Plantation drives are launched every year only with the alleged intention to grab money. The ground reality is that plantation drives carried out so far have failed as the department could not get back the encroached jungles and do plantation there," the official added.
Sources said that Forest Minister, in his recent meeting, asked officials to make third party monitoring system effective and time to time inform the Government about the works carried out by officials in their respective areas under CAMPA. However, without having any ground knowledge of plantation drives which were launched in previous years without consulting experts and environmentalists, the Minister, just for the sake of conducting a meeting, once again asked officers to go for massive plantation drives in forests and other places in Social Forestry.
One noted environmentalist of Kashmir, Shakeel Romsho while talking to Early Times about the money spent under CAMPA said that '70 pc plantation drives launched under CAMPA scheme of the Government have failed as it does not consult environmentalists'.
'Ill-planned programmes are changing jungles. Instead of planting conifer trees officials concerned mostly plant other species of plants for the sake of show off. They do it deliberately as conifer trees need protection which these officials despite tremendous investment in the sector cannot manage," he added.
He said that the Government must use money in real sense and alleged that due to the misuse of funds and corruption prevailing in the Forest Department, forests in Kashmir were on the verge of destruction. |
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