JOIN USPM, Sonia speak for MGNREGA workers
On a day when the UPA government was battered by the Supreme Court verdict in a case of 2G spectrum allocation scam, Congress president Sonia Gandhi asked the authorities to deal seriously with complaints of corruption in the implementation of the rural job scheme, MGNREGA.
“Corruption in MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) is a great injustice to the country and a crime in respect of the Father of the Nation after which it is named. We cannot ignore the complaints that are coming regarding the irregularities and corruption in the scheme,” Gandhi, chairperson of United Progressive Alliance (UPA) said at a press conference here.
The Congress leader expressed concern over the delay in the payment of wages to MGNREGA
workers and said there was a need to ensure that they got their due remunerations, timely.
“The delay in payment of their (workers) wages is illegal and unacceptable to us under any circumstances. We will have to ensure that MGNREGA workers get timely payment,” she said.
Gandhi, who also heads National Advisory Council, made a strong pitch for bringing reforms in the rural employment scheme.
Panchayat’s role
She said panchayats had a role in implementing the scheme and the grass roots organisation should be empowered.
Gandhi said the scheme has helped arrest migration from the affected parts of the country as people were getting jobs closer to their homes.
Officials said the ministry has been working on the suggestions to expand the job scheme to cover irrigation and its convergence with total sanitation campaign. While MGNREGA is primarily a guarantee to employment in rural areas, whether it can be also used for bringing comprehensive reform in public health sector or managing natural resources in a better way in such areas, she wondered, giving an indication that the UPA’s flagship programme may undergo some crucial changes in the days to come.
Sharing the dais with Gandhi at the MGNREGA Conference 2012, Prime Minister Manhoman Singh, too, expressed serious concern over the delay in the payment of wages to workers.
“We have achieved successes in MGNREGA in last six years but there are still many challenges before us. The biggest concern is to ensure timely wage payments to workers. For this, the banks and post offices will have to increase their reach. Our effort will be to ensure that the workers get their wages within 15 days,” Singh said.
The prime minister noted the lack of staff was leading to the delays in payment of wages to workers and urged the state governments to give greater emphasis on resolving this issue.
He also congratulated Ramesh for implementing the job scheme in Maoist areas and said playgrounds for children can be built under the scheme in these districts.
He said the government was allocating around Rs.40,000 crore annually for the scheme despite financial difficulties.
Rural Development minister Jairam Ramesh, in his address, responded to the concerns raised by the prime minister and the United Progressive Alliance chairperson and said that measures to improve the MGNREGS will be announced by next month.