There’s some good news for the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) as the wage rate per day has been revised with effect from April 1.
The revised wages were withheld in the State on account of elections to the State Legislative Assembly and enforcement of the model code of conduct.
The revision in the wage rate indexed to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labour (CPIAL) will come into effect retrospectively from April 1 and will prevail for the year 2013-14.
Compared to the wage rate per day in 2006-07, it has been more than doubled this fiscal.
The State government issued an order hiking the wage per day from Rs. 155 to Rs. 174, an increase of 12.25 per cent. With this revision, the wage rates have been revised seven times since the launch of the job scheme in 2006-07 by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA-A) government.
The Centre has allocated to the State Rs. 2,133.01 crore for the implementation of the job scheme in 2013-14, official sources in the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj told The Hindu .
The what of the scheme
The MGNREGA promises 100 days of work a year to each rural household at a pre-determined minimum wage rate. A total of 690.42 lakh man days of work would be generated in the current fiscal year.
According to the State government’s notification on April 9, 2013, the month-wise expenditure under the job scheme would be: Rs. 13.38 crore in April, Rs. 28.76 crore in May, Rs. 38.19 crore in June, Rs. 47.21 crore in July, Rs. 71.38 crore in August, Rs. 136.17 crore in September, Rs. 160.16 crore in October, Rs. 228.68 crore in November, Rs. 249.42 crore in December, Rs. 275.92 in January, Rs. 405.86 crore in February and Rs. 477.83 crore in March 2014.
According the Centre’s notification, unskilled workers in Haryana would get the highest daily wage of Rs. 214, up from Rs. 191/day. Daily wage under the MGNREGA has been fixed at Rs. 210 in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Rs. 209 per day in Chandigarh.
Streamlining things
To eliminate funds pilferage under the job scheme and to ensure direct transfer of cash, the State government has rolled out the electronic fund management system (eFMS) in districts of Bangalore Rural, Tumkur, Hassan, Bagalkot, Dharwad, Bellary and Mysore.
Under the eFMS, details of work done by people under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act are maintained in electronic form by using a particular software which would enable the authorities concerned to directly credit the wages into the account of the person concerned. Besides, direct transfer of wages in the bank account of persons concerned, eFMS also enables evaluation of the work undertaken under the MGNREGA. The objective of eFMS is to transfer funds to MGNREGA beneficiaries in real time.
