India CSR News Network
MUMBAI: YES BANK, India’s fourth largest private sector Bank, has developed a customized software for Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) – an Indian government welfare programme which provides food, primary healthcare and preschool education to children under 6 and their mothers – to digitize the fund disbursement process through Public Financial Management System (PFMS).
The PFMS software was inaugurated by Hon’ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, and will digitize payments for over 2,00,000 plus Anganwadi workers and helpers, including 80,000 Anganwadi sevikas, 80,000 Anganwadi Madatnis and 40,000 Mini Anganwadi Sevikas.
Over a period of 6 months, YES BANK has collated the account details of these two lakh Anganwadi workers by visiting six divisional offices across Maharashtra and also assisted in uploading the same on the PFMS portal.
The money disbursed will reach the Aadhar-linked accounts (Jan Dhan yojana) of end users (Anganwadi Workers) through the government’s Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme.
PFMS, a Government of India initiative, is an end-to-end solution for processing payments, monitoring, tracking, accounting, reconciliation and reporting. PFMS is the vision of our Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to bring transparency in Government disbursements.
Speaking on the occasion, Hon’ble Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, said, “I congratulate YES BANK for the development of the PFMS Software for implementation of Aadhar-based DBT payments to 2 lakh Anganwadi sevikas. I deeply appreciate their sincerity and dedication towards this project.”
Commenting on the development, Rana Kapoor, Managing Director and CEO, YES BANK, said, “YES BANK is privileged to be associated with the Government of Maharashtra and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), given the phenomenal work done by them in bringing the rural women workforce into mainstream by providing them and their children with basic healthcare, primary education and food. As a leader in digital payments, YES BANK’s partnership with ICDS will help digitize the payments ecosystem in India, with the view to enable seamless integration, ensuring that the fund transfer to the end user is transparent, with inbuilt speed and security. I believe this will go a long way towards actualizing the vision of Digital India and a less-cash economy.”
Under the current process, 553 project offices raise a monthly Bill for payment to Government Treasury, which accepts the Bill and releases funds to ICDS for funds disbursement to DDO’s (Drawing and Disbursing Office). The ICDS transfers the funds to project offices, which then make the payment to end beneficiaries.
Post the Digitization, the 553 project offices will now be able to update the attendance of the two lakh plus Anganwadi workers on the portal. Basis the attendance, ICDS Head Office (HO) will raise the consolidated Bill to Treasury, which will accept the Bill and release the funds in ICDS HO account. ICDS will then transfer the funds directly to the end users through the PFMS portal.
Earlier, the end-to-end turnaround time for disbursement was 1-2 months (for the funds to reach the end beneficiary), but with this digitization, the time period will be reduced to 5-7 days.
The new process will result in elimination of paperwork, reduction in the number of people (Departments/ Stakeholders) involved in making timely payment to the end consumer, and better control on payments by ICDS, and easy reconciliation.
