PM, Sonia to address NREGA meet
Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi during the MNREGA Sammelan 2011
The implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) continues to suffer from bottlenecks even as the UPA flagship programme completes five years on February 2, 2011.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi will address the MGNREGA sammelan on Wednesday to mark the occasion.
The rural development ministry is concerned over the poor performance in some states on indicators like average person days generated per household, spending of approved labour budget, non-payment of unemployment allowance and delay in payment of wages.
Data available with the ministry shows that though the act guarantees 100 days of employment per year, the national average is just 34 persondays per household generated under the rural job plan. Surprisingly, many big states could not even touch this figure. For instance West Bengal could achieve only 19, Punjab 21, UP 28 and Bihar 29 persondays.
NAC members like Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze have been demanding third party role in the social audit of MGNREGA works to have more transparency in the scheme. Currently the village sarpanch, whose role in some cases is doubtful, does it.
Non-payment of unemployment allowance to the workers if they are not given work after 15 days of registering for it is another problem area.
Against Rs. 22,44499 due as unemployment allowance, the payment made by the states was only Rs. 1,68,549 till October 2010 in the financial year 2010-11.
Cases of delayed payment of wages, delay in measurement of work, lack of staff to oversee the works, and limited number of banks and post offices to facilitate wage payment through bank accounts too present a challenge before the government.
The government has spent Rs. 74,677 crore on MGNREGA wages since inception, which is around 70 per cent of the total expenditure.
States also failed to spend their approved labour budget targets for 2010-11. For instance, Andhra Pradesh spent only Rs. 39 lakh against Rs. 41 lakh, Rajasthan spent only Rs. 55 lakh against Rs. 75 lakh, Uttar Pradesh spent only Rs. 40 lakh against 68 lakh and Madhya Pradesh spent only Rs. 28 lakh against allocated Rs. 48 lakh.
Tackling these issues would be a challenge for the new rural development minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
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