Govt made record payments under MGNREGS this year

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Centre has made a document fee to employees enrolled within the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme within the first eight months of the present monetary 12 months, leaving it with simply 10% of he cash allotted for it to spend within the remaining 4 months.

The rural growth ministry, which administers the world’s greatest job assure scheme, was allotted Rs 84,900 crore in two instalments to fund MGNREGS within the 12 months ending in March 2021. Of this quantity, it had spent Rs 76,800 crore in April-November. The quantity spent in the identical interval final 12 months was about Rs 50,000 crore.

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In reality, the ministry has spent 12 share factors greater than the allocation made within the price range and has the very best expenditure price amongst all Central authorities ministries, exhibits the Controller General of Accounts web site. As the expenditure report exhibits, a finance ministry official aware of the matter stated, there could be no scarcity of funds for MGNREGS and extra cash shall be supplied to it as and when wanted.

Demand for work underneath the scheme, which mandates at the very least 100 days of guide work a 12 months for at the very least one member of each rural family, surged within the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and the next lockdown, which triggered an exodus of employees from the cities to the countryside.

A MGNREGS tracker launched on Thursday stated the expenditure on the scheme was on account of 10 million extra households getting work this 12 months (till November), a 243% enhance in individual days (work) generated and better wages paid to employees as in comparison with the earlier 12 months.

“The total active job cards this year was 90.2 million and of them 83.09% sought work,” the tracker ready by People Action for Employment Guarantee, a community of NGOs, stated.

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Although the demand peaked in May, it slowed within the subsequent months as employees from poorer states corresponding to Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand began returning to cities. The tracker stated the common work supplied to particular person households was lower than within the earlier years.

Till November finish, a median family obtained 41.59 days of labor as in comparison with 48.Four in 2019-20 and 50.88 in 2018-19. Only 1.9 million households obtained work for the 100 days mandated underneath the legislation in comparison with 4.06 million final 12 months. Of them, 210,000 have been in Rajasthan and 350,000 in Andhra Pradesh, which additionally dipped into their very own funds to make sure NREGA employees obtained cash on time. The variety of households getting 100 days of labor was the bottom in Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu amongst all Indian states.

The report additionally stated that round 13% of the 75 million households who demanded work underneath the scheme obtained none. “The data shows that there was surge for NREGA work demand due to pandemic and the government failed to meet the demand,” the report stated.

Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand have been the 2 states the place one-fourth of households demanding work weren’t engaged in guide work even for a single day, the info confirmed. Rajasthan and West Bengal did effectively to preserve the unmet demand decrease than the nationwide common.

Jharkhand’s rural growth secretary Aradhana Patnaik stated the state was probably the greatest performers. “We have been stagnating around 70 million man days for past three years. But, we have achieved 77.7 million man days against the target of 80 million,” she stated.

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Rajasthan’s MGNREGS commissioner PC Kishan stated the scheme’s implementation within the state is demand-driven, therefore unmet demand was much less and employment supplied larger than the earlier years.

Nikhil Dey, a former member of the MGNREGS Council, stated, “We would have been happy if more people would have got at least 100 days of work…. That did not happen and it proves government inefficiency.”