MGNREGS lags behind in meeting target in telangana for current financial year

Hyderabad: Though the financial year is coming to an end, the targets of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) are yet to be achieved.

As much as five crore person days have to be generated by the end of this financial year, that is by March 31. The NREGS officials were able to provide 9.75 crore person days whereas about 14.99 crore has being planned for this financial year. Only 65 per cent of the target has been achieved.

According to the details submitted to the Union government, under NREGS about 1.13 lakh families have been provided with 100 person days in the year against the total number of 55.34 lakh households which have the job cards.

It seems the targets of the scheme may not be achieved in this financial year, resulting to a cut in next year's labour budget, as the Centre releases budget as per the performance of the state.

According to sources, the number of person days or daily employment being provided to the job card holders of NREGS is coming down in the rural areas due to various reasons.

The sources said that in some districts where crops have been sown on a large scale, the daily wage seekers were not showing much interest in the NREGS works. In some other districts, the staff of NREGS was unable to provide work, though there were demands.

The sources said, the Rural Development authorities were not showing much interest in improving the efficiency of the staff, of the scheme for better planning and execution.

The field assistants, who are responsible to provide daily wage were not taking their jobs seriously.

Even some field assistants were unable to provide at least 10 person days, to the job card holders. The average person days being provided in the state has not crossed 40.

In the previous financial year by March 10, 2019, 11.77 crore person days have been provided and about 2.2 lakh households have been provided with 100 person days. In the previous financial year also the target of providing 15 crore person days has not been achieved.

The staff of the NREG says that the daily wage workers were not showing interest in taking up the works under the scheme though they have the job cards. They said that the farm labour was getting more income from the agriculture works than the NREG works.

In some villages the staff was unable to plan the works properly to provide employment. Though there were lots of works to be taken up under NREG, they were unable to identify the works in their own villages and failing to provide employment.