Two Lists, One Landslide, Thirty Lakh
Four days after a landslide in your ward, the damage report reads: 42 households with houses fully destroyed, 78 with houses partially damaged and unsafe to enter, and 120 households displaced but with houses intact. A federal conditional grant of Rs 20,00,000 has arrived for temporary shelter, carrying a fixed ceiling of Rs 25,000 per fully destroyed household and an explicit condition that it may not be used for any other purpose. The ward has Rs 10,00,000 of its own untied budget. Two beneficiary lists are circulating: the ward secretary's list has 268 names, a local party's list has 241, and 19 names appear on both with different house numbers. About 300 people are sleeping in an open school ground and winter is six weeks away.
1. Allocate the available Rs 30,00,000 across the three groups and show which rules constrain each line of spending.
Read the worked answer
Conditional grant - Rs 20,00,000, temporary shelter only:
- 42 fully destroyed households × Rs 25,000 = Rs 10,50,000.
- Balance Rs 9,50,000 cannot be diverted to food, medicine or partial damage. Either the line agency amends the agreement in writing to widen the permitted use, or the balance is reported and returned as unspent. Ring-fence it and record it separately from the ward's own money.
Ward's untied budget - Rs 10,00,000:
- 120 displaced households × Rs 5,000 immediate relief (food and non-food) = Rs 6,00,000.
- 78 partially damaged households × Rs 5,000 emergency repair and safety support = Rs 3,90,000.
- Total Rs 9,90,000, leaving Rs 10,000 for the verification and documentation cost.
What this means honestly: every household gets something, but the partial-damage support is token against real repair costs and the fully destroyed households have shelter money but no reconstruction money. Note the gap explicitly and request the balance from the municipal disaster fund and the provincial government, rather than promising amounts the ward cannot pay. Publish the rates and the entitlement per category before distribution so that the queue is predictable.
2. How would you settle the beneficiary list before any distribution takes place?
Read the worked answer
Verify, do not choose between the lists. Both lists are claims to be tested, and a party list carries no evidentiary weight simply because it is organised.
Steps:
- Re-survey each affected settlement with a household form carrying the head of household's name, ward and settlement, a house number or GPS point, family size and damage category; photograph the damage.
- Cross-check against the ward citizen database, the voter roll and the disaster portal entry, so that one household appears once.
- Resolve the 19 duplicated names by house number and site visit; where a household genuinely appears in two settlements, take the place of residence at the time of the event.
- Constitute a verification committee with ward committee members, a woman representative, a teacher or health worker and a representative of the affected families; minute its decisions.
- Publish the draft list at the ward office and at the school ground for three days with a written grievance register and a named officer to receive complaints.
- Approve the final list by ward committee decision, signed and dated, and keep the rejected claims with reasons.
3. The ward chair suggests using part of the conditional grant for food relief for the 120 displaced households, since the shelter money is 'not enough anyway'. How do you respond, and what do you do with any unspent shelter funds?
Read the worked answer
Response: the grant was accepted with a written condition limiting it to temporary shelter at Rs 25,000 per fully destroyed household. Spending it on food is a breach of the grant agreement and of the appropriation, and would be reported as misuse of a conditional grant; the officer who signs is personally answerable. The correct route is an amendment, not a reinterpretation: place a written request before the line agency asking whether the balance may be used for a specified permitted purpose, and wait for a written reply.
Meanwhile: the food relief is funded from the ward's own Rs 10,00,000, which is lawful and needs no permission.
Unspent balance: keep it in a separate ledger, do not net it against other expenditure, show it in the monthly and annual statements, and either remit it or carry it forward strictly as permitted by the grant terms. Unspent conditional grants are normally refunded, not silently absorbed.
Record keeping: the file should show the grant letter and conditions, the beneficiary list, the distribution sheet with signatures or thumb impressions, the stock and cash reconciliation, and the correspondence about the balance. If the chair still insists, record the advice in the minutes and copy the file to the internal audit.