The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), the flag ship rural job scheme of the erstwhile United Progressive Alliance Government, has almost ground to a halt in the district.
Despite assurances of continuing the scheme, the Central Government has not disbursed the salaries for workers in this scheme since the beginning of this financial year, sources in the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), which implements the scheme, told The Hindu here on Sunday.
While the agency had sought Rs. 100.20 crore to pay for an estimated 60 lakh man days in Coimbatore during 2014-15, only Rs. 1.20 crore had been allocated towards the administrative expense such as paying the salaries of staff overseeing the MGREGS implementation. Even this was below the required Rs. 3 crore. No explanation has been given so far by the Union Ministry of Rural Development despite queries, a senior DRDA official added.
This seems to be the case not only in rest of the State but in other parts of the country as well. A source in the State Rural Development Department said that enquires had revealed that Centre had not provided salaries in many States.
While revamping the rural job scheme towards productive asset creation linked to agriculture and allied activities, the new Bharatiya Janata Party Government had increased the annual outlay by Rs. 1,000 crore to Rs. 34,000 crore in the Union Budget.
As a result, from a peak of 24,000 labourers, the district now recorded just around 1,500 workers who were turning up with the hope that their wages would be credited in the future. The payments were usually made every week on Tuesdays.
The official said that while allocation for the entire State was in the region of Rs. 5,000 crore for the scheme, the figure for Coimbatore district would be in the range of Rs. 90 crore.
As a pilot project, the rural job scheme was used in Coimbatore for agricultural activities since last financial year. A farmer was chosen in each of the 12 blocks under this project. The labourers carried out farm work such as removing weeds, spraying pesticides and harvesting besides dairy, poultry and rearing sheep, goats and pigs. As many as 1,324 farm ponds were created under this scheme.
This resulted in a substantial reduction in cost of operations for farmers. However, all of this has now been halted, sources said.
A greening campaign under which the labourers took up plantations of saplings alongside national and State highways besides at panchayat and Government land was also taken up under MGNREGS in Coimbatore. Nearly 7,500 saplings of mango, neem and other native species were planted in Sarcarsamakulam block alone, of which 87 per cent survived due to the maintenance done under this scheme.
The State Government was considering continuing this initiative with local funds, sources added.
