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| Gross financial indiscipline in NREGA implementation | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Feb 18: As all eyes remain fixed on the pace and progress of various rural developmental works in the rural areas of the State, a major scandal is brewing in the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MG NREGA) programme.
The result of this scam has been that the people in many rural areas of the Valley and the Jammu region are reporting complaints of non-payments of their wages by the officials on the pretext of non-availability of funds.
As a centrally sponsored scheme there are no restraints of funds in the NREGA programme. Funds are available in multiples of crores for each district of the State and these are being utilized by the various Panchayats under the supervision of the rural development department. Works to be undertaken within the jurisdiction of a Panchayat are identified by the village Sarpanch in consultation with other Panches in the area. Estimates are prepared by the officials of the rural development department under the supervision of the local block development officers (BDOs). As NREGA is essentially a rural employment generation programme, every person is guaranteed employment for at least 110 days in one year and this employment is through wages given to the locals who work on the NREGA schemes in the village. Nobody employed under the programme has to move out of his village for seeking employment as guaranteed under the programme.
The NREGA worker has to open an account in the nearest post office or a bank where wages are to be deposited into his/her account on a regular basis ensuring that every such worker gets a minimum of 110 working days in a calendar year.
It is most shocking that many unemployed rural men and women have been complaining that the concerned officials have been denying them wages for the last several months maintaining that there are no funds in the NREGA scheme under which they were employed. This is not only an open violation of the spirit for which the NREGA programme has been started in the country, but also a brazen instance of financial indiscipline which needs an immediate probe.
How were the poor rural workers employed to work as labourers on a certain programme in the village under the NREGA programme when there were no funds available to start the programme? It is a well known fact throughout the country that funds are centrally released for each block in the country under the NREGA programme and there is no scarcity of funds in this national programme. If some dishonest officials are telling the NREGA workers that there are no funds available in the schemes under which their services were utilized, it has to be a blatant lie.
Further to this, another scam brewing under the NREGA programme is withdrawal of large amounts of money on fictitious works. A probe needs to be undertaken to find out whether or not the works claimed to have been executed in a certain village under the NREGA programme actually exist on the ground. Unless immediate attention is focused on the proper implementation of this national programme meant to benefit the poorest of the poor in the State, it would result in another state level scam. |
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