Logjam in MGNREGA

Rural Development Department of J&K is faced with reprimand from the Union Ministry of Rural Development for a number of defaults in the implementation of Centrally sponsored prestigious scheme known as MGNREGA. This is a national project aimed at bringing relief and support to the daily wagers who are not sure how many working days they can have in a week or a month. When the scheme was floated the Union Ministry of Rural Development also provided a handbook of procedures for implementing the scheme along with fundamental guidelines. The Union Joint Secretary (MGNREGA-RDD) has found serious lapses and flaws in the State Rural Development Department in implementing the scheme as envisaged in the guidelines. Consequently a strong letter has been sent to the Commissioner-Secretary Rural Department drawing his attention to these flaws and asking for correcting the course of action.
The shortcomings to which the Union Joint Secretary has drawn the attention of the RDD are surprising as well as shocking. One cannot believe that the State Government would underestimate and even trivialize the prestigious scheme to the extent it has done. This is not the first time that  we are reflecting on the subject. We have brought strong awareness among the people in general that the State will be a loser if we do not observe the norms of various well thought of projects of the Central Government. For instance, take into account the shortfalls to which the Union Government has referred in the context of NREGA. The Empowered Committee (EC) meeting held during March this year reviewed the performance of the State for the year 2016-17 and also approved the Labour budget for the year 2017-18.  During the meeting, several shortcomings and violations of rules and other irregularities were pointed out while implementing NREGA in the J&K State.
The Empowered Committee has expressed unhappiness over the delay caused in the payment of wages to the Labour class members, engaged under MGNREGA in various districts of the State. While the workers have been denied their hard earned wages for months and years together under MGNREGA, the delay compensation rules are also yet to be notified by the RDD authorities. It is sheer callousness on the part of the RDD to adopt such insensitive and blatantly callous attitude towards the daily wagers and the labour class. Withholding the wages for the work done is tantamount to violating human rights and we suppose that labour laws should be invoked to hold the perpetrators of atrocity responsible. What is worst, the RDD has not even cared to calculate the compensation that the agency is required to pay the labourers for delayed payment of earned wages as is stipulated in the guidelines for the project. Likewise, referring to the issue of social audit, while a manual training of Village Resource Persons (VRP) on Social Audit has been shared with all the States in the country, the State is yet to initiate the process. The auditing standards have also been notified by the Union RDD Ministry for conducting social audit of NREGA works in the State. It is unfortunate that J&K State has not complied with the directives of the Union RDD Ministry. Not a single Ombudsman has been appointed in any one of the 22 districts of the State.
We would like to draw the attention of the Minister holding the charge of Rural Development Department to take note of how things are going on with the major scheme in the State and how its bottlenecks could be removed for smooth and expeditious undertaking of works and proper implementation of the guidelines set forth by the Union Ministry.

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