The implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the State is headed for a crisis owing to the delay in the receipt of Central funds. Anticipating the delay, the State government directed local bodies to spend money from own or general purpose funds to prevent an administrative deadlock.
Though the Centre bears the administrative expenses under the MGNREGS, States are allowed to earmark only 6% of the total expenditure incurred in a given financial year. Kerala incurs on an average ₹110 crore a month for administrative expenses. This includes salaries of over 3,000 employees on contract, training, telephone and Internet charges, and social auditing. The Central funds are paid into the State’s Consolidated Fund and on receipt it is distributed to the district, block and grama panchayats.
Delayed wage payment
Timely payment of wages to workers are also likely to be affected because the Centre tightened the norms relating to generating muster rolls and payments. It has advised the State governments to generate payments within eight days of closure of the muster rolls, including attendance and generation of wage list. This puts pressure on the managers to do their paper work on time to get funds released.
In the meantime, the overall performance of the programme has come drastically down, with only 53,81,599 persondays being generated in July as against the projections of 62,14,500. The performance of Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Palakkad, Pathanamthitta, and Malappuram was much below the projected levels. When compared to the same period last year, the persondays generated as on August 1, 2016 was 11,00,8042 when compared to the August 1, 2017 figures of 53,81,599. The percentage of achievement was just 53.11 compared to last year’s figures. According to experts, it appears that the State government’s attention on this premier poverty alleviation programme is flagging.
