NEW DELHI: The protesting MGNREGA workers across the country may get some respite from the government on the vexed issue of digital attendance at their workplaces. However, it is unlikely that the government will concede the worker’s demand of rolling back the Aadhaar Based payment (ABPS).
The Centre’s responses came in its first meeting with representatives of unions and civil society organisations which was held early this month. To address the worker’s woes concerning the glitches in digital attendance, the ministry is likely to introduce SMS confirmation to confirm the worker’s attendance at the workplace.
Thousands of MGNREGA workers have been protesting against the Center’s mandatory imposition of the digital-attendance App, developed by National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), and route of wage payments through Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS). The digital attendance system necessitates workers to click geo-tagged photographs twice a day to mark their attendance.
A functionary, who attended the meeting, told this correspondent on conditions of anonymity that the government seems to have acknowledged the widespread protest over its move to make the NMMS app and ABPS mandatory.
The meeting was attended by officials from the Union Ministries of Rural Development and Finance, and the National Informatics Centre, informed a participant. While one of the Union representatives pointed out the unconstitutionality of replacing physical muster rolls with a mobile app for attendance, the officials were silent on the issue, according to one of the participants.
“We told them that the law doesn’t allow you to do away with the physical muster rolls. The government will have to amend the law to replace it with digital attendance. The government cannot do it simply with an order. We showed them the provisions,” he said.
Though the officials did not give any assurance on sending text messages individually to the workers about their attendance records, they said they will work on it. “However, the officials repeatedly said that nobody will be excluded because of these policy decisions,” said a source.
While the government says that the mechanism will stop pilferage and will check fake attendance on the muster rolls, activists and workers say that thousands of workers, especially women will be excluded from the workforce.