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Father struggles to get NREGA wages, son dies in hospital by Supriya Sharma

A week after he lost his ailing son, and ten months after he worked on a village road project, Pitbasu Bhoi finally got the ten thousand rupees he had earned under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Program (MNREGA).

"Of what use is the money now? I have just immersed my son's ashes. When I needed the money to save his life, I did not have it," says Bhoi.

The disabled man, in his forties, along with his wife, had put in 100 days of work last year under the rural job guarantee program to dig earth and build a road in village Pampapur in Chhattisgarh's Sarguja district.

Bhoi began work in February 2010. According to provisions under MNREGA, workers should be paid within 15 days of work. But ten months later, in the second week of January, as his 22 year old son Santosh struggled for life in a hospital, suffering from a serious kidney ailment, Bhoi was still limping around to collect his wages.

"My son had been complaining of pain for a few weeks, but since we did not have the money, we delayed taking him to the hospital. Finally when the pain became unbearable, we travelled 30 kilometres to Ambikapur town. After admitting him there, I travelled back and forth between the hospital and the block panchayat everyday, trying to get my money," said Bhoi.

But he did not get the money, and five days after he was hospitalised, his son Santosh died. As reports appeared in local newspapers, local officials visited the village, and on Thursday, the branch of the rural public sector bank handed Bhoi ten thousand rupees.

"The death is unfortunate, but it cannot be connected to the delayed payment of wages," said Dhananjay Dewangan, chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat. He claimed the wages had been released by the administration a few weeks ago, but could not explain why Bhoi did not get the money from the bank on time.

"This is just one case. In Pampapur village alone, there are 58 workers who have not receievd their wages for several months," said Manish Rai, a local activist of Gram Adhikar Manch.

Activists identify the problem of delay in payments of wages as the "the single biggest challenge" facing NREGA in Chhattisgarh.

In October 2010, a survey by Right to Food groups revealed that 68% of workers got their wages later than a month. The survey covering 43 blocks in 17 districts, randomly selecting 10 workers in each panchayat, interviewing a total of 1620 workers, found a glaring mismatch between the data on the NREGA website and what the workers had actually recieved.

For instance, in Sarguja, the NREGA website claimed 100% of workers had been paid within a month, but during the survey, 61 percent of the workers said they had not been received their payments.

"The monitoring system is very weak. Wage data is entered incorrectly. District collectors do not know the true extent of the payment delay," said Sameer Garg, advisor to Commissioner of Supreme Court for food security. "If the problem is not correctly monitored and recognised, how will it be solved?"

The survey report concludes rather bleakly: "uncertainty regarding wage payments results in the poorest opting out of NREGS work and even migrating". Activists fear this could defeat the very purpose of the program launched in 2005 to act as a safety net for vulnerable rural poor.