-Right to Food Jharkhand Ranchi (Jharkhand): Close to 1,000 NREGA workers and other rural labourers converged to Birsa Chowk from 12 districts of Jharkhand today and sat on dharna to protest against repeated attacks on their right to food and right to work. The event was jointly organised by Right to Food Campaign Jharkhand and NREGA Watch. The dharna was prompted by a series of recent starvation deaths in Jharkhand. The...
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A lifeline, interrupted -Nikhil Dey & Aruna Roy
-The Indian Express Government is prioritising savings over MGNREGA and rights of the poor. Rambeti from Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, graphically described the predicament of MGNREGA workers like her in a recent press conference in Delhi. “The government repeatedly states that it will not let us die of starvation. But the truth is, it does not allow us to live either.” That is a terrible evaluation of MGNREGA — a landmark legislation enacted...
More »With Shifting Accountability on NREGA Payment Delays, Workers Continue to Be Denied Their Due -Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala and Rajesh Golani
-TheWire.in Not only is the government failing to make timely payments, but the Centre’s definition of what constitutes a ‘delay’ is also flawed. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) guarantees 100 days of work in a year for every rural household that demands work. In the current financial year, over 152 crore person days of work has been generated through the programme. The Act mandates that every worker must...
More »NREGA wage payments are being withheld by the Centre, alleges civil society organisations
-Press Note from NREGA Sangharsh Morcha Since the start of the FY 18, we have pointed out the willful misrepresentation of delays in wage payments, incomplete calculation of the full extent of compensation due to workers and the under provisioning of budgets for the program. In August, we released a report by independent researchers, that used the Ministry of Rural Development’s own data to show how the Central Government is deliberately...
More »Tamil Nadu's MGNREGA Workers Left in the Lurch Due to Delayed Wages, Unused Funds -Divya Karthikeyan
-TheWire.in In 2016-17, pending payments under the employment scheme in the state amounted to a whopping Rs 5,571 crore. Tiravur, Tamil Nadu: “I could kill someone,” said Janaki Chinarasu in early June at her home in Tiruvarur, protecting her forehead from the heat with her hands askew. “It’s like the sun god has conspired with the rain god to punish us.” Chinarasu is a frail, strong-witted woman with a five-year-old on her lap...
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