PUDUCHERRY: Rural development minister Sai Saravana Kumar, on Tuesday, assured to look into the enhancement of employment days under Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in consultation with Chief Minister N Rangasamy, after the opposition leader R Siva flagged the issue in the legislative assembly.
The minister said that, out of the total of 19.64 lakh employment days decided at the Empowered Committee Meeting, 8 lakh employment days were approved and up to 7.96 lakh employment days were been provided, in 2022-23 at an outlay of Rs 1790.31 lakh. The central government will be approached to generate more employment days, he added.
Observing that work under MNREGS is a final 'fall-back' option for many in rural areas, Siva said that the average employment duration per household has only been 14 days in 2022-23. In some villages there was no work at all, he said. The reason is said to be a lack of funds. There are 75, 406 card holders in Puducherry and 100 days of work for them means 75.40 lakh working days in total, said Siva, adding that, more than Rs 200 crore in funds is required to make it possible.
But the union government has provided only Rs 12 crore and also the Puducherry government has not taken any action to get more funds, the opposition leader said. For the past two years, only 8 lakh working days per year have been implemented, leaving out the remaining 67 lakh working days, said Siva. Though the wage per day is Rs 283, only Rs 210 is provided, he added, and charged the government with deceiving people.
In many states, there is a growing demand to increase the assured employment from 100 to 150 days and to extend the rural scheme to urban areas. On the one hand, the union government is slowly diluting the scheme by reducing funds and introducing various regulations, while the Puducherry government has completely neglected the scheme, he added. After the BJP came to power in the UT, there was not enough support for the scheme and there is speculation that the scheme would be gradually stopped.
This is because the scheme mandates employees to register their attendance on a mobile application, said the opposition leader. “How will people living below the poverty line be able to afford and use android phones, with many villages still not even having proper internet connectivity. There is also a risk of loss of wages if there is a technical problem and this will create confusion in the attendance records of the employees,” he said. He urged the government to implement the scheme fully in the current financial year after procuring the required funds from the union government and allocating the UT's contribution appropriately.
Speaker R Selvam said that out of 98 village panchayats, only around 10 were taken into account when the officials were preparing the proposal, and he cited this to be the reason behind the low number of employment days, while R Senthil Kumar (DMK) pointed to administrative issues as being the cause.