NREGA wages to be directly put in beneficiaries’ a/c

NREGA wages to be directly put in beneficiaries’ a/c
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Highlights

As part of the new initiative, the photographs of the NREGA works would be uploaded onto the National Informatics Centre (NIC) website which allows the Central government to directly credit the amount into the bank accounts of workers. Hopefully, this would avoid the delay in payments to the workers.

Kothagudem: In what could be described as good news for the rural labourers who work under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), Bhuvan, the app, developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), enables the Central government directly to pay wages to the NREGA workers into their bank accounts from January next.

As part of the new initiative, the photographs of the NREGA works would be uploaded onto the National Informatics Centre (NIC) website which allows the Central government to directly credit the amount into the bank accounts of workers. Hopefully, this would avoid the delay in payments to the workers.

It may be recalled that the NREGA workers were not paid for last four months. The officials stated that there was delay in releasing funds from the Centre. However, there have been allegations that the State government, at times, has been utilising the funds in case of emergency and later paying the workers.

The NREGA workers would be given new job cards from January which would allow the Centre to pay wages directly. Henceforth, the works like plantation on the bunds of the fields, digging soak pits, leveling of land, preparing water ponds, planting mango saplings would be uploaded onto the website with the help of Bhuvan. List of works would be prepared village and mandal-wise.

The field assistant would download the app on his mobile and upload the photos village, mandal, district and State-wise through the app onto the NIC website. This makes it easy for the officials to find where exactly the work is going on. The district officials are being trained with special geo-tagging devices.

Speaking to The Hans India, DRDA project director Jagat Kumar Reddy said the new initiative would be beneficial to the NREGA workers and there would be transparency in NREGS works.

He said the Bhadradri-Kothagudem district was in the second place in the State in using the Bhuvan app and anybody could open the application and verify in case of doubts, he added.

The NREGA is being implemented in 17 mandals in Bhadradri-Kothagudem district and 2,13,315 job cards were issued benefiting 4,97,396 persons.

During 2016-17, 2,192 job cards were issued benefiting 3,490 persons in the district. So far the workers were paid Rs 4,872.65 lakh as wages. Rupees 24 lakh for implements and Rs 2.89 lakh under miscellaneous were spent. However, Rs 3 crore arrears have to be paid to the workers which would be paid in a week, Reddy said.

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