The new National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) App has come as a bane for wage seekers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
It is a daily struggle for them to access the app to mark their attendance before commencing work and then punching out at the end of their work — a new feature that has been made compulsory to curb malpractices.
According to the new norms of the Union Government, all MGNREGA workers are required to upload two geo-tagged photos every day on the app. Failure to do so would mean loss of payment for the backbreaking work done unmindful of the harsh sun, especially in summer when they cannot expect any work in farms elsewhere, a group of workers complain at Marlapadu village, near Tangutur in the midst of their work.
‘’We wish that the government switches over to the physical marking of attendance by the staff of the District Water Management Agency (DWAMA) as in the past so that we do not miss out on payment for the strenuous work done,” said Srinivasa Rao, 58, an illiterate person unfamiliar with the use of smartphones. Many a time, the computer server remains offline as a result of which they are unable to mark attendance, rue another group of workers at a remote village called Alluru near Kothapatnam.
The new app has turned out to be a hurdle for the workers in accessing welfare across the 38 mandals in the drought-prone district, as most of the work sites are in areas with poor internet connectivity, laments Andhra Pradesh Agricultural Workers Union district general secretary K. Anjaneyulu. Under the new system, each village has been taken as a unit for allotment of work. As a result, everyone is paid uniformly regardless of who toils all day and who whiles away time.
Small groups of workers should be allowed to work at a particular work site and paid as per the quantum of work done individually. Many will not be able to complete one cubic metre of work at a time.
The workers press for jobs at least for 200 days and also a hike in wages to ₹600 per day. Facilities such as tarpaulin, buttermilk, crow bar repair charges and summer allowance are not being paid now unlike in the past for reasons not known to them, they lament.
The number of persons seeking work in the district came down to 2.40 lakh as against 3.50 lakh during the corresponding period last year, according to DWAMA sources. As many as 8.17 lakh workers from 4.39 lakh families had enrolled their names. The average pay realised by each worker was only ₹229 in the district. Taking a cue from other southern States like Tamil Nadu and Kerala, urban employment schemes should be started in Andhra Pradesh to provide livelihood security to the migrant workers, they opined.
They work under challengingcondition and some of them even succumb to sunstroke, they said referring to a man named Ch. Ramakrishna, 33, who reportedly died of sunstroke at Korlamadugu village near Kanigiri on May 17. In another incident, P. Savitri, 37, reportedly died of sunstroke at Cherlapalli village near Tripurantakam on May 12, they recalled and sought compensation of ₹5 lakh each to the bereaved families.
