Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has empowered the ordinary farm worker by providing an assured source of income and it has come to be accepted by the community.
“A number of community assets are being created under the programme and the Centre too is giving a lot of importance to the programme, Aparajita Sarangi, Joint Secretary of Union Ministry of Rural Development, said here on Thursday. The importance being given by the State governments to the programme can be gauged from the fact that last year the states spent Rs. 7,000 crore more than the allocation by drawing from their own resources.
Speaking after inspecting the working of the AP government initiative to leverage technology in the NREGS processes from demand generation to wage payment, she said the focus this year was on water conservation and building of assets.
The village in K Kothapadu mandal was the first to report 100 per cent internal cement concrete roads taken up under the NREGS. Interestingly, the board on the Panchayat Office declared that Rs. 431 was paid as wages for the 600 metres of internal roads laid at a total cost of Rs. 11,69,846 creating 10 person days of work. The staff scurried around and added another digit to make it 104 person days.
This year the Centre proposed creation of 7,50,000 farm ponds across the country and AP alone proposes to create 5 lakh farm ponds and states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and UP were also taking up farm ponds under the NREGS. Already some 5 lakh farm ponds were nearing completion, the Joint Secretary noted. Construction of Anganwadi buildings, individual household latrines, vermicompost production units and roadside plantation was also being taken up under the programme this year.
Payment of wages
Andhra Pradesh was able to speed up the process of payment of wages and it was leading the country with a mere seven per cent wages not being paid on time. The Union Rural Development Ministry had brought in a delegation of officials from 10 states to learn from the experience of the State in leveraging technology. The interaction was the third such Inter-State Exchange Programme organised by the Ministry, the Union Joint Secretary explained.
Noting the internal CC roads in the village, the official said that from this year the guidelines had been changed to make it 50 per cent material component from NREGS and 50 per cent from the panchayat funds. Interacting with farm labourers, she enquired about the working of the scheme and their satisfaction with the processes.
State’s Commissioner of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Ramanjaneyulu along with senior officials from different states were present.
