Delay on the part of the Union Government in transfer of wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, has further compounded the woes of thousands of workers during these difficult pandemic times.
The Centre is taking 26 days on an average to complete the wage transfer to the NREGA workers in Andhra Pradesh, thrice as long to process the payments than it should, according to a sample study conducted by LibTech (Liberation Technology), an organisation comprising social scientists working to improve transparency, accountability and democratic engagement in rural public services delivery.
“Considering the 13th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and other official documents reporting that no compensation was paid for delay of payments to the NREGA workers in Andhra Pradesh for the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, we randomly sampled 1% of panchayats in the State (130 of the 12,956 panchayats) by downloading details of wage payments for all the job cards that appeared for work in the current financial year (2021) up to July 31,” said Chakradhar Buddha, Director, LibTech, for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
He went on to explain that they downloaded the Fund Transfer Order (FTO) also for these panchayats for the financial years 2020-21 and 2019-20, and got the difference between the date of FTO generation (date on which the FTO is sent from State to the Centre) and the date of credit to see how long each of the transactions took in Stage 2 of the payment process.
The NREGA payments are done in two stages. After the work is completed, an FTO is generated and digitally sent to the Centre in the Stage 1, which is the State government’s responsibility. In Stage 2, the Centre processes the FTOs and transfers wages directly to the workers’ accounts.
As per rule, Stage 1 should be completed in eight days and Stage 2 in seven days, and both the stages should be completed in 15 days of the closure of the muster of work.
Mr. Buddha said, out of 3.95 lakh downloaded transactions for which the FTOs were sent to the Centre, 34% transactions were still unpaid as on August 10 this year.
“We analysed 2.58 lakh transactions, which were paid across the 130 panchayats,” he said.
‘Pay compensation’
As of August 10 this year, 34% (of 3.95 lakh) transactions were still unpaid and less than 20% of credited payments have been completed within the stipulated 15-day time period so far in this financial year.
He demanded that the government pay compensation for the delay caused on its part to pay wages to the workers, who are already at the receiving end of the vagaries of the pandemic.
