Declining demand for jobs under MGNREGA, but workers await pending payments

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is a social security and employment scheme aimed at providing “at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a fiscal year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work”.

It comes under the Ministry of Rural Development and was implemented in 2006.
 

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, while addressing the Lower House of Parliament on December 14 this year, claimed that the demand for work under MGNREGA is on the wane.

“There is now very obviously a declining demand for jobs in rural areas. In rural areas, the demand for MGNREGA in the recent past has been coming down,” Sitharaman had said in the Lok Sabha (LS).

However, MGNREGA workers across the country are awaiting nearly Rs 4,447.92 crore in pending wage payments, according to an LS response given by Minister of State for Rural Development Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti on December 13. Of this, the Union government owes nearly 68 per cent of the pending wages to West Bengal, followed by Kerala (10.2 per cent) and Tamil Nadu (4.7 per cent).

Sitharaman, during her speech in Parliament, said that MGNREGA funds to West Bengal have been halted since March this year, “because of complaints received from various people”.

According to the MGNREGA Act, “the central government upon receiving these complaints shall keep the release of funds on hold until a necessary explanation is received from the state concerned”, said Sitharaman.

Source: IndiaSpend, Parliament debates