Wages high, but number of workdays are low

The Orissa government is all set to increase the minimum daily wage for unskilled workers to Rs 90 from Rs 70. That should be good news for Chintamani Jena of Gedma village in Keonjhar district, who works on projects under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) and earns Rs 70 now. He should be even happier that the Centre is increasing the wages further to Rs 100.

But Jena isn’t too enthused. For, he may be lucky with the NREGP wages, but not as lucky with the number of days he gets to work under the scheme. He earned Rs 490 in February this year, working on a road improvement project in Gedma for a week. But that was the last spell of work he got. He says he usually looks for NREGP work between February and May when farms offer little work, and switches to the fields after that. But there wasn’t any work in March, April and May for him under NREGP. In the previous two years, Jena got only around 14 days of work.

Since the agricultural wages during the cleaning and harvesting period are much higher than NREGP wages, there is no point in going for work under this scheme during the peak farming season, he says.

That is, however, a cause for worry for farmers, who have been finding it difficult to get enough workers during the harvesting season. “Earlier we used to give a farm worker Rs 60 as daily wage. But from the last harvesting season, we have been paying them Rs 120 per day as workers in our village have become scarce. This has rendered farming unviable”, says Radhamohan Dash, a farmer.

Dash could be reassured by the data of work provided under the scheme. This shows that of the 52,12,933 people who have been issued job cards from the time the NREGP was launched, only 11,92,896 households were provided employment during 2008-09.

And though higher NREGP wages may not simultaneously lead to more work days under the scheme, villagers are still hopeful. “The proposal to raise NREGP wages to Rs 100 per day should be implemented at the earliest, as agricultural wages have outpaced the NREGP wages”, said Basanta Jena, another daily worker.

Villagers here are also free to work on a piece-wage basis where wages depend on volume of work done. This gives them a chance to earn more than just the minimum wage. Piece-wage is different for various categories of works, is decided by the state government from time to time.

“We have been providing Rs 70 per day (unrevised) to labourers who work as daily labour. But they can earn more under the piece-wage system”, R K Das, additional secretary, panchayati raj department of the Orissa government, said.