HYDERABAD: A whopping Rs 250 crore is the wages due and unpaid under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) scheme in Telangana for the last two months. After much deliberation from the State rural department, the central government released Rs 132 crore on Thursday.
The department officials, however, say it is not enough.For officials running the show, the haggling for funds with the central government to run the NREGA scheme in Telangana started in 2014. The 2015-16 labour budget for NREGA for the state was Rs 13 crore, and the department spent Rs 13.7 crore that year. In 2016-17, the fund allocated was Rs 10 crore and the department that year spent Rs 10.7 crore.
The labour budget allocated for the scheme for 2017-18 was a mere Rs 8 crore that the rural development department ran out of by June. “By June we had already done Rs 9.6 crore person days worth of NREGA work, which is why we requested for more funds,” said B Saidulu, joint commissioner Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) and Information Technology (IT), rural development department. “The state had made a budget projection of `18 crore for this year but got awarded only Rs 12 crore. It’s not notified yet,” he added.
To verify the work done by the state under NREGA, the central government sent a team to check the rural departments NREGA records. “They had sent a team to both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to verify the records and check for irregularities. The team, found only minor issues related to some records and job cards that needed updating and did not find anything major,” said Saidulu.With funds for the scheme drying up per year, the number of persons opting to use the scheme too has dropped in the state. From employing 45.76 lakh persons in the 2015 the highest for the state in a drought year, employment under the scheme subsequently dropped to 40.42 lakh in 2017.
Under the revised NREGA rates, a labourer is entitled to Rs 197 for his or her work. However, the states average wage rate per day is just Rs 138.75. “The wage is calculated based on how much work was done so on paper it is Rs 197. But in summer the number of working hours drop, due to less number of work hours the wage rate drops,” suggests Saidulu as to the reason behind a low average wage rate in the state.
Labour budget
The 2015-16 labour budget for NREGA for the state was Rs 13 crore, and the department spent Rs 13.7 crore that year In 2016-17, the fund allocated was RS 10 crore and the department that year spent J10.7 cr