BHUBANESWAR: Notwithstanding the state government’s apprehension over drastic reduction in financial allocation under National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in the Union budget for 2023-24, over 85 per cent of the approved labour budget has been achieved so far with generation of more than 12.79 crore man-days.
With five months to go, the state is all set to touch the record figure achieved during Covid-19 pandemic. After generating over 20 crore man-days in 2020-21, the demand for labour intensive work went down to 12.87 crore man-days in 2022-23. The approved labour budget for current financial year was 15 crore man-days with expenditure of Rs 3,709.41 crore as on date. The fund utilisation is 85.37 per cent.
The Ministry of Rural Development has so far released Rs 3,551.53 crore against Rs 4,345.32 sanctioned for the state. However, wages amounting to Rs 28.70 crore remain unpaid to the workers despite the state government provisioning Rs 1,000 crore corpus for timely payment of the remuneration.
Sources in the Panchayati Raj department attributed the delay in payment of wages to non-seeding of Aadhaar number to the bank accounts of workers. The Centre has introduced Aadhaar payments bridge system (APBS) for paying wages through direct benefit transfer (DBT).
However, some of the account holders are either changing their accounts and as new ones are not being updated by the programme officers concerned due to non-submission of details by the beneficiaries on time, several transactions are being rejected by destination bank branch.
The state has made a provision of Rs 1,800 crore in its annual budget for the current financial year towards material components under the wage employment scheme and another Rs 500 crore for providing 150 days work in some districts to check labour migration.
Of the 28.54 lakh households that reported for work under the scheme, 1,51,610 have completed 100 days of work. Of the 12.79 crore man-days created till November 6, the percentage of women workers are more than 49 per cent. The average days of employment provided in the state is 45 with an average wage rate of Rs 246.22 per person. Opposition ruled states had expressed concern after the Centre slashed the budget allocation to Rs 60,000 crore for 2023-24.
Positive trend
12.79 crore man-days created so far
85.37 pc funds utilised
Centre has released Rs 3,551.53 crore to the state