THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
A new requirement introduced in the national mobile monitoring system to mark the daily attendance of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGS) workers from February this year has created a crisis in job sites with several workers unable to get their attendance marked.
Over the past week, the number of muster rolls, which consists of details of workers in a particular location, have fallen from an average of 40,000 to around 8,000.
Under the monitoring system, the attendance of the workers has to be marked twice in the day, in the morning, before the day’s work begins, and in the afternoon, before the second session of work begins.
As per the new guidelines, geo-tagging and geo-fencing have been introduced into the system. Once the first attendance of the workers is taken, the location has to be geo-tagged. The second attendance has to be marked at a distance of within 10 metres of this location, as part of a ‘geo-fencing’ mechanism.
According to people who work with the MGNREGS Mission on the ground, this has created quite a few practical difficulties, especially for works which are related to canals and roads. In the afternoon, the workers are required to come back to the original point and again return to the location till which work has progressed.
In many cases, those who manage muster rolls have been finding it difficult to match the location as required by the system (within 10 m of the original point), leading to errors.
The lack of proper Internet connectivity in the rural interiors where much of the work happens, which has been a persistent issue ever since the launch of the monitoring system, has further compounded matters. In the initial days of launching of the system, wage payments were held up due to technical issues. The latest addition to the system is again leading to a situation where thousands of workers will be denied work which is guaranteed to them.
The national mobile monitoring system was first piloted with a requirement to capture the attendance at worksites with more than 20 workers through the mobile system. It was later made mandatory in all worksites.
