The Shaadi Mubarak scheme,launched by the State government, seems to be bogged down due to the frequent transfer of the officials and lack of staff in the Minority Welfare Department.
“We had already written to the District Collectors seeking to allot staff to make the scheme a success, but so far no action has taken in this regard”, says a transferred officer.
The Hyderabad District has a minority population of around 16.9 lakh. The government had targeted to help 7,723 beneficiaries and allocated Rs 39.39 crore funds. However, it received only 1,098 applications till February 14. The same case is with the other districts.
Due to non availability of the staff the officials are not able to spread the scheme on large scale, also resulting in the large number of applications remain in pending with the department.
The Minority department received 3,921 applications of which 1,705 are pending for verification and only 2,129 applications were sanctioned the money.
Another problem which the beneficiaries were facing was insistence on producing birth and income certificates. Majority of the poorer sections would not have income or birth certificates.
“There are thousands of girls, who did not even study up to 10th standard. It has become nearly impossible for them to get the certificates. Even those who are applying for these certificates are shelling out thousands of rupees as cut to middlemen,” says Mujeeb, who recently applied under the scheme.