THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the first four months of the current fiscal, 8.3 lakh households in the state have benefited from the employment generated by the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). During 2020-21, 16.17 lakh households were provided employment under the MGNREGA, making it a credible alternative livelihood for thousands whose daily jobs were hit hard by the Covid crisis.
Nearly, 80% of the beneficiaries of the scheme are women in the state. From April 1 to August 1,this year, 1.09 crore person-days of job could be created in the state benefiting registered workers from 8.3 lakh households, according to an answer provided by Union Minister for Rural Development Giriraj Singh to MP Thomas Chazhikadan in the Lok Sabha on August 3. This has benefited 19.5 lakh woman workers and 5.28 lakh male workers in the state.
In all districts, the scheme is continuing full steam and, at this pace, more families will be benefited from the scheme this year than the last fiscal, according to officials who said total person days crossed 1.7 crore by August 20. Though Kerala had imposed lockdown during May-June, MGNREGS jobs were exempted from curbs. In the last fiscal, the state could create 10.20 crore person-days under the scheme.
MGNREGS Mission state director S Shanavas said the project has helped the rural poor in the state tide over the hurdles posed by Covid and lockdown. “I can say there are no suicides among MGNREGS scheme workers. Our workers were successful in managing their households well during the crisis. Along with the activities of Kudumbashree Mission and the initiative to provide free grocery kits through ration shops, the employment scheme helped our people tremendously during the trying times,” Shanavas told TNIE.
Realising the significance of the scheme during a pandemic, the mission directorate has started vaccination camps for MGNREGS workers in association with local bodies. In the state, per-day wages for an unskilled labourer under the scheme is `291. Though the Union government introduced a 3.5% hike in MGNREGA from April, Kerala and Lakshadweep were excluded from the hike as the existing wages here was higher than other states. According to the reply in the Lok Sabha, a total of 39.69 lakh job cards have been issued to the households under the scheme in Kerala, of which 20.22 lakh are active. During 2020-21, 7.55 crore families benefited from the project nationally.
Shanavas said the mission’s thrust now is to devise sustainable models under which the collective work under scheme can be invested constructively. “In Pullampara panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram, we have done a pilot project for comprehensive watershed management recently. By using 60,000 person days of work, a sustainable project for managing watershed that can be of `4.5 crore value was created there. Similar projects will be implemented across the state,” he said.
Over the years, the MGNREGS workers have taken up house, canal and road construction works, thus upgrading from jobs like grass cutting, cleaning ponds and setting agricultural land assigned to them initially.
“We now plan to integrate the scheme with plan projects of panchayats so that the collective workforce can create constructive projects at micro local levels,” said Shanavas. The mandate of the Act, 2005, is to provide at least 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult member volunteers to do unskilled manual work. In Kerala, workers in tribal areas were guaranteed 200 days of job last year.