Akshay Azad
Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 2: As Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) completed 10 years, the scheme is still showing dismal performance in J&K. Expressing concern, Union Ministry has shot a communiqué to State Government directing the latter to plug gaps.
In the communiqué sent by Joint Secretary (MGNREGA) to Secretary of state Rural Development Department, several loopholes in the implementation of scheme have been highlighted.
As per the letter, the agreed labor budget for the financial year 2015-16 was 311.9 lakh man days but during the current financial year up-to 27th of December only 67 lakh man days (37%) have been generated against the projection of 183 lakh man days till December 2015. The State Government has been directed to expedite the pace of person days' generation.
Moreover, on account of timely payment of wages, during ongoing financial year Rs 30 Crore (72% of total transactions) were delayed for more than 15 days. "Out of this, 35% of the payments were delayed for more than 60 days", the communication reads as and further directing the State Government to analyze the reasons behind the delay of wage payment.
Expressing concern over dismal performance in completion of works, the letter further reads as during the financial year as on December 27, the percentage of works completed was only 2 percent. The Union Ministry further directed the State Government to review and track the reasons for slow progress.
The state RDD has also shown very poor performance on account of creation of individual assets, public works related to natural resource management, expenditure on works related to agriculture and allied works beside others.
In the concluding paragraph, the Union Ministry letter reads, "There are total 1101424 active workers in the State, with 48308 Aadhar numbers seeded in NREGA software. The percentage of Aadhar seeding is 4% against the percentage UIDAI enrollment of 48.3%o. Further it is found that there are about 9536 Aadhar numbers which are pending for cross verification by the PO". |
