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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | MGNREGS: Rural development ministry may speed up wage payments -Yogima Seth Sharma

MGNREGS: Rural development ministry may speed up wage payments -Yogima Seth Sharma

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published Published on Apr 29, 2014   modified Modified on Apr 29, 2014
-The Economic Times
 

NEW DELHI: The rural development ministry wants states to raise a cadre of so-called barefoot engineers to boost the effectiveness of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) by helping to speed up wage payments that are getting delayed by as much as three months because there aren't enough employees to monitor the work being done under the jobs programme.

The ministry wants to rope in those who are already programme beneficiaries to overcome the lack of staff, said a senior ministry official. The idea is to provide them with technical training for assessing the work done under the scheme and then attach them to engineers at the block level, the person said.

The suggestion will be made to the new government, which will be formed after elections, as the current one won't be able to take any action that contravenes the model code of conduct that's in force. The rural job programme is regarded as one of the key social welfare achievements of the UPA government, which helped it retain power in 2009 elections.

The ministry is in the process of formulating core guidelines to train one beneficiary each from an MGNREGS family across at least a dozen states where the problem is acute. Wages worth Rs 2,700 crore, or 25 per cent of the total, are delayed beyond the stipulated 15 days. In 600-1,000 blocks in states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh and the North-East, wages are delayed by 30, 60 and up to 90 days, defeating the social welfare aspect of the scheme.

"The delay in wages has been a serious challenge before us despite enforcing the compensation provision in the guidelines," said the official cited above. "This is primarily because of inadequacy of staff to assess the work done. Hence, we are exploring the possibility of using members of NREGA ( National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) families to work for the government after providing them with technical training and absorbing them as skilled workers to do the job."

According to the official, who did not want to be identified, as the proposal is at a preliminary stage, training for the personnel and their salaries will be funded from material costs under the scheme and not from administrative costs as that would restrict the ability of states to hire more staff. "Under the overall allocation for the scheme, currently 70 per cent is being spent on wages and 30 per cent forms the material cost. However, the guidelines provide for 60:40 and this gives us enough cushion to increase our expenditure under material costs," the official added.

 


The Economic Times, 28 April, 2014, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/mgnregs-rural-development-ministry-may-speed-up-wage-payments/articleshow/34308599.cms


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