Delays in the payment of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) wages have mounted drastically in April-May 2017, as Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) worth ₹3,045 crore are yet to be processed by the central government’s National Electronic Fund Management System (NEFMS).
According to data collated from the NREGA website by the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a platform that tracks the implementation of the workfare programme, 63% of the unprocessed FTOs were generated in April-May. The processing delay was highest in the cases of Kerala and Uttarakhand, where no FTOs have been processed since April 15.
This follows another period of 20 days in March-April 2017 when no FTOs were processed by the Centre.
Eligible for compensation
As per Schedule II of the Act, an NREGA worker must be paid within 15 days of completing his allocated tasks. A delay in payment, for which the worker must be compensated, has to be calculated from the 16th day after task completion, till the time the money is credited in the worker’s account.
A note released by the NREGA Sangharsh Manch pointed out that the NREGA Management Information System (MIS) has been programmed to calculate the compensation in a flawed manner. It calculates the delay only till the second signature on the FTO from the state government, after which the pay order goes to the central government for processing.
Systemic failure
“According to a recent study, it takes, on an average, up to 25 days for the payment to reach the worker even after the FTO has been signed,” said Ankita Aggarwal of the NREGA Sangharsh Manch. “But this delay and unexplained delays such as the one caused by the current non-processing of the FTOs, is not accounted for in the system.”
The Ministry of Rural Development has so far not provided any explanation for the irregularities in the FTO processing nor the flawed calculation of the payment delays.
The FTOs haven’t been processed since May 2 in the case of Karnataka, since May 8 for Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan, and May 5 for Himachal Pradesh. This has resulted in workers in these States not having been paid more than 15 days after completion of work. However, the NREGA MIS (management infomation system) does not capture this delay denying them compensation.
“The government must adopt a system for NREGA payments that is reliable and not vulnerable to gross irregularities such as repeated delays in the processing of FTOs,” Ms Aggarwal said.
