Thiruvananthapuram, May 15 (IANS): Union Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh on Friday said the local government should focus on monitoring the efficiency of service delivery mechanism and also ensure good governance.

He was inaugurating the second edition of the International Conference on Deepening Democracy (ICODD) organised by the Kerala government here.

"Local governments in the states should address second generation issues related to decentralisation of powers to the grassroot level and it should improve their own revenue and develop viable programmes for solid and liquid waste management," he said.

The Centre is transferring Rs.200,292 crore to the panchayats in acceptance of the 14th Finance Commission award, he said.

"Hence, these local bodies can no longer take recourse to resource crunch to explain the lack of good governance and the state governments cannot postpone capacitating their panchayat leaders for leadership and good governance," the minister added.

Singh asked the panchayats to adopt the `Antyodaya' approach in respect of rights based development so that the poor and marginalised gain full access to their entitlements.

Later, speaking to reporters, Singh said the Centre was going ahead with a project to form clusters of gram panchayats. Each cluster would be a hub of trading, business and industry with all other modern infrastructure facilities.

It has been proposed to form 300 clusters covering 2,000 villages, of which 100 clusters would be set up this year itself .