-The Hindu It will complicate payment system, may lead to a reduction in funding, say experts. The Centre has asked the States to split wage payments under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme into separate categories for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and others from this financial year. Workers’ rights advocates said this will unnecessarily complicate the payment system, and expressed fears that it may lead to a reduction...

-The Hindu Centre taking 26 days to clear payment orders generated by States: study Almost 14% of MGNREGA wage payments from April are still pending more than a month later, while 60% of May payments are also pending, according to scheme data. A recent study of the MGNREGA wage transactions in Jharkhand shows that while the States are generating fund transfer orders without delays, it is the Centre which is dragging its...

-The Telegraph Workers yet to receive a month's payment from Centre and state at a time, no work is available owing to the pandemic Koushalya Hembram, 42, of Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district worked under the rural job scheme for 21 days in April. But the unmarried resident of Podahat village had not received her wages till Monday. No other work is available in her area amid a resurgent Covid. “I keep checking my mobile...

-Hindustan Times The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has witnessed the sharpest year-on-year increase in employment generation in its history in April 2021, government data shows, in a sign that the second Covid wave has caused major reverse migration adding to rural economic distress. According to rural development ministry data, around 22 million households have got work under the job guarantee in the month of April 2021, which is...

With the rise in Covid-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths since March this year, media reports (please click here and here) on migrant workers returning back to their native places (i.e. places of origin) from migration destinations (i.e. workplaces likes cities and large industrial towns to where the informal and low skilled workers from the marginalised sections of the society migrate seasonally, and sometimes for a longer duration,...