Guidelines for grant-in-aid under Plan Scheme “Capacity Building and Technical Assistance”
1. Introduction and need for revising the scheme.
Given the increasing importance of service sector in GDP and particularly exports, there is an immediate need for meeting global demand.
The Plan Scheme of Capacity Building and Technical Assistance of Ministry of DoNER aims to provide funding for skill development, enhancing of employability and competencies and promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship. The scheme also seeks to enhance the knowledge and skills of mid level North East State Government functionaries to facilitate better governance.
2. Proposals eligible for funding-The proposals having the following objective shall be eligible for funding under the cheme:
- To provide employable and entrepreneurial skills.
- To organize job/skill fairs within and outside the region that will specifically involve the youth from the region.
- To create awareness of skill potentials.
- To provide a platform for career orientation/vocational or both.
- Establishing counselling/career orientation centres for helping youth to adopt a new environment outside NER and also to opt for an optimum career.
- Setting up finishing schools in each state for personality development, communication skills, basic IT skills, soft skills, technical skills, life management skills.
- To carry out Psychometric/Aptitude test of the youth to give right direction.
- Training of trainers in the form of training workshops for educators, trainers, counsellors to help the youth.
- To assist in surveys, evaluation in the field of skills and competencies.
- To assist institutions/organizations in the public/private/non-profit/joint sector who can assist in testing of competency levels and certification so as to enhance employability especially in the unorganized sector.
- To assist in providing any other specialized inputs required for human resource development for building of skills and capacities in any sector that is critical for the development of the region.
- To provide technical assistance for development of human resources and capacity building.
- Capacity building of mid level officers of the State Governments, Organizations and institutions under the control of the State Government on contemporary issues such as good governance, project formulation, M&E of projects of DPRs.
- Any proposal which in the view of Ministry of DoNER poses an innovative and creative way of enhancing the skills and competencies of the people of the North Eastern Region.
- In the interest of integrating the North East, the Ministry will encourage proposals that seek to train student/youth/officials from the North East in a common group with participants from other States.
- The skill development courses would have to conform to the National Skill Qualification Framework(NSQF) as per the notification No.8/6/2013-Invt., point 13 (b) dated 27.12.2013 which provides for transition of all training/educational programmes / courses to be NSQF compliant by third anniversary date of the notification i.e. 27.12.2016. Thus the proposals accepted under the scheme should be aligned with NSQF.
- The skill development proposals for defining the skill input, input standardisation in terms of outcome, costing and monitoring and tracking should conform to the Notification No.H-22011/2/2014-SDE-I dated 15.7.2015. (xviii) The training partners are required to be affiliated to Sector Skill Councils.
3. Target Groups
- Youth from the North East Region residing within and outside the Region.
- Special focus on girls, women, disabled persons and youth from BPL background and from remote and backward districts or unreached areas.
- Focus on youth who are dropouts or have discontinued education after secondary level.
- Mid level officers who are at the critical implementation level of the state governments State PSUs and autonomous organization of the State Governments.
4. Eligible Organizations
- Central and State Government Departments.
- Centres of Excellence in Training, Education, Research, Universities, PSUs in Central, State, Joint or cooperative sector and autonomous organizations under Central, State and local governments.
- Reputed institutions of training and education in the private sector.
- Corporate and Industry Associations willing to partner in sectors where there is a shortage of skills such as in hospitality, aviation, banking and insurance, automobiles. This is only an illustrative list.
- Non-government organizations and trusts that fulfil eligibility criteria.
5. Submission of proposals
- All new proposals will be submitted in prescribed format in the months between January and March for funding requests in the next financial year. The same will be informed through the website of the Ministry (valid from the financial year 2009-10 only).
- Ongoing proposals will be funded as per the schedule of release of grants mentioned in para-6 (1.), (2.) and (3.) of these guidelines upon receipt of utilization certificates and other prescribed documents.
- The Ministry may also invite eligible institutions/organizations to take up Capacity Building programme and technical assistance based on the felt needs of the North Eastern Region.
6. Administration of the Scheme
All proposals shall be examined by the CB&TA Division before they are placed before the Sanctioning Committee. The constitution of the Committee is proposed below:
1 |
Joint Secretary (CB&TA), M/o DoNER |
- Chairman |
2 |
Joint Secretary/Representatives of M/oSD&E |
- Member |
3 |
An expert in the area/Human Resource Development with experience of the North Eastern Region |
- Member |
4 |
Any other JS of M/o DoNER |
- Member |
5 |
Representative of IFD, M/o DoNER |
- Member |
6 |
Representative of Ministry/Deptt. related to the proposal under discussion |
- Member |
The Committee shall meet every month and as and when required.
Projects recommended by the Committee shall be sanctioned with the approval of Secretary, Ministry of DoNER and concurrence of IFD.
7. Release of Grants-in-aid:
M/o DoNER has a Website Monitoring Policy in place and the website is monitored periodically to address and fix the quality and compatibility issues around the following parameters:
-
Short Duration Courses: Training courses of upto 6 (six) month duration are short duration courses. The disbursement schedule in respect of short duration courses will be as given below at Table 1.
Table 1: Disbursement of Grants-in-aid for Short duration Courses
Installment |
Stage |
Percent of amount Approved |
1st |
Joint Secretary (CB&TA), M/o DoNER |
75 |
2nd |
Receipt of Achievement-cum-Performance Report and UC for the full amount and expenditure statement of account which should be submitted within 3 months after completion of total duration of the training programme. |
25 |
-
Medium Duration Courses:Training courses of over 6 (Six) months upto 1 (One) year are medium duration courses. The disbursement schedule for projects of medium duration courses will be as under (Table 2).
Table 2: Disbursement of Grants-in-aid for Medium Duration Courses
Installment |
Stage |
Percent of amount Approved |
1st |
Project approval (after receiving the acceptance and bond executed) |
50 |
2nd |
Mid-term progress review (and receipt of UC of 1stinstallment) |
40 |
3rd |
Receipt of Final Report, UC for the full amount and expenditure statement of Account. |
10 |
-
Long Duration Courses: Training courses of over 1 (one) year are long duration courses. The disbursement schedule for projects of long duration courses will be as given at Table 3.
Table3: Disbursement of Grants-in-aid for Long Duration courses
Installment |
Stage |
Percent of amount Approved |
1st |
Project approval (after receiving the acceptance and bond executed) |
50 |
2nd |
1st progress review after the completion of the 1st year from the commencement of training course (and receipt of UC of 1st instalment) |
40 |
3rd |
Receipt of Final Report, UC for the full amount and expenditure statement of Account. |
10 |
Release of second and subsequent instalments shall depend upon review by M/o DoNER of the progress of ongoing course or assessment of completed training as of acceptable quality.
8. Eligibility Norms for Institutions other than those which are under State and Central Governments or autonomous bodies/PSUs of the State and Central Governments.
- The organization should have completed at least 3 year of activities especially in the field of activities applied in, from the date of registration under the Central Societies Registration Act, 1860 or under corresponding State Act or be a Trust registered under the Indian Trusts Act, 1882 or the Charitable and Religious Trusts Act, 1920 or any other statute as may be applicable.
- The organization should have its accounts duly certified by an authorized Chartered Accountant. These should be up-to-date and open to due diligence exercises.
- The organization should have up-to-date published Annual Reports on their activities.
- The organization should preferably be for not-for-profit ones and should furnish an undertaking to the effect that they are not making profits out of the grants received from the Government of India under this scheme.
- The organization should have published Constitution, Articles of Association and a duly constituted management structure, with clearly defined powers.
- The organization should not have been blacklisted by Central or State Governments or any other agency.
9.Other conditions for Acceptance of Grants-in-aid under Capacity Building and Technical Assistance.
- The grantee institution shall maintain separate account of the grant-in-aid provided by the ministry of DoNER for undertaking a project.
- The grantee organization or institution shall not accept any financial assistance from any other source(s) for the same project without the prior permission of the Ministry of DoNER.
- The grantee organization or institution shall furnish quarterly report of the project along with a statement of expenditure actually incurred during the quarter. The organization/institution shall record a certificate to the effect that the expenditure has been incurred in accordance with the sanctioned grant.
- The persons employed in the project will be treated as the employees of the organization/institution and not of the Government of India and the conditions of their service will be governed in accordance with the rules and orders of the organization applicable to such persons.
- The scheme will not normally finance any capital expenditure on lands or buildings. However, capital expenditure for training material or training equipment can be funded wherever necessary as the emphasis of the scheme is on creation of capacity and not asset creation.
- The organization/institution will have to execute a bond in favour of Ministry of DoNER on judicial stamp paper of `100/-.
- On completion of the project, the organization/institution shall submit final report along with supporting documents such as photographs and utilization certificate of the grant-in-aid.
- The applicant organization will issue a certificate to the trainees after their successful completion of the training.
- The applicant organization will submit the proposal in the prescribed application format.
10. Norms of Funding- The extent of funding of the eligible project will be decided by the competent authority based on the merit of the proposal and will be upto a maximum of 100% project. It shall be open to the Ministry of DoNER to spend upto 0.5% of the annual allocation for administrative expenses such as preparing pamphlet, etc., for the dissemination of the scheme. The components which will be funded are listed below:
- Course fees.
- Administrative costs, inter-alia, for selection procedure covering, advertisements, written/oral examination and travel expenses of facility to visit the State of the North East Region. These will be considered as contingent expenditure to be normally restricted to 10% of the total course fee. The training institution should conduct a fair and transparent process of selection of candidates covering all eight States of the Region.
- Boarding and lodging.
- Travel costs of trainees – one time travel cost for to and fro journey from the place of residence to the institute limited to the second class sleeper rail fare and cheapest bus are for the places not connected by train on production of relevant ticket/document.
- In case of Government officers PSUs/Other autonomous bodies, travel cost of the employees will be reimbursed as per their entitlement in their respective government/PSUs other autonomous bodies, on a certificate that they have not claimed TA/DA from any other source.
- Service tax as and where applicable.
- Expenditure on training of employees of State Governments and organizations under it will be restricted to 10% of the annual allocation under the scheme. Preference for such training will be for long duration intensive courses in selected areas critical to the development of the NER.
- Training schemes of skill development implemented by the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises for youth from the North East can be dovetailed with this scheme as may be mutually agreed between Ministry of DoNER and Ministry of MSME.
11. Evaluation
The grantee institutions should follow the time schedule indicated in the Sanction order strictly and periodical reports such as enrolment of trainees and other activities relating to the project should be reported to the Ministry. Inspection will also be carried out to assess the proper implementation of the sanctioned project. Evaluation will be conducted for each project after completion, Ministry of DoNER reserves the right to blacklist the organization if it is implementing the project in an unsatisfactory or improper manner.
12. Linkage with PFMS / DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer):
The grantee institutions shall ensure that they get thesemselves registered with PFMS of Ministry of Expenditure. They would be also required to be DBT compliant.
13.Application Forms
Prescribed format for submission of proposals under the scheme is available in the official website of the Ministry of DoNER.
14. Bond
All organizations that do not come under the category of Central Government, State Government, PSU of the Central /State Governments, autonomous, subordinate and statutory organization of the Central/State Government, have to execute a bond. In addition to this in case of private organisations, before the release of the first instalment Bank Guarantee for a suitable percentage of the total grant to be indicated by the Ministry of DoNER has to be furnished.
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