VISAKHAPATNAM: The Human Rights Forum (HRF) and Samalochana Association have criticised the ‘paltry’ quantum of revision in wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The revision from Rs 237 to Rs 245 is measly and amounts to a mere eyewash, they said.
In a statement here on Thursday, Samalochana Association convener Chakradhar Buddha and HRF AP & TS coordination committee member VS Krishna expressed concern over the gap in the minimum wages stipulated in the Minimum Wages Act and NREGA.“...the unremunerative levels of the NREGA wages together with chronic shortage of work and delay in payments are proving to be detrimental to the key objective of the scheme to arrest distress migration.” They said widespread disruption of economic activity caused due to the Covid-19 pandemic had forced many people to turn to MGNREGA in the rural India. “The Union government has chosen to write-off mammoth debts of corporate firms, but it did not ensure minimum wages commensurate with the Minimum Wages Act,” they added and demanded, among other things, enhancement of NREGA employment period to 200 days to each household and payment of minimum wages under the Minimum Wages Act.
They said HRF and Samalochana also took exception to the recent decision of the Union Government to disallow coffee plantation works under the MGNREGA in the tribal areas of AP. This has impacted tribal farmers as they would be losing out around `15,000 per acre per year. “Over a lakh adivasi farmers would be rendered without wage support, and find it difficult to sustain themselves because of the ill-advised move,” they said.