PAYMENT DELAYS WEAN WORKERS AWAY FROM NREGS

PAYMENT DELAYS WEAN WORKERS AWAY FROM NREGS

Monday, 29 April 2013 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA | in Bhubaneswar

Basanti Sagaria of Kusmal village in Nuapada district is one of the beneficiaries of land development work under MGNREGS. An amount of Rs 30,000 has been sanctioned for development of an acre land which was devastated due to sand casting during the flood of 2008.

Land development under MGNREGS came as a great relief for Basanti, because without this support, she would not have reclaimed the land.

“The programme is good, but the payment is not made in time,” says Basanti. “I have taken a loan of Rs 15,000 to pay wage to the labourers, who were employed in the land development work. The Junior Engineer has not yet taken the measurement, although I have completed the work,” she laments, adding that because of the delay in getting the project cost from the Government, she would have to pay interest at Rs 3 per month to the money lender.

The development work in Basanti’s land started on March 13 last. Work measurement reveals that the total earth work done till now is more than 1,000 cubic meters, which would amount to a payment of more than Rs 25,000 to the workers. But only Rs 2,643 has been paid.

Upasu Majhi is another beneficiary of the land development work. Total amount sanctioned for his work is Rs 30,000. He has completed 90 per cent of the work but the labourers have been paid less than half of their dues.

The list of such delayed payment goes up –Chhabi Majhi, Binod Majhi, Bedabara Sagaria and there are at least 90 beneficiaries and over 200 labourers in Kusmal village who have continuously worked for last one and a half months but have not been paid their wages. Most of the beneficiaries of the project have taken loan to make the payment.

“I have mortgaged a small gold ornament of my wife for Rs 5,000 to pay the labourers,” says Chhabi Majhi, who is about to complete the work but the wage amount released for her project is only Rs 9,701.

BJD leader Sanjay Tiwari says, “Such delay in payment is not limited to Kusmal village only, it is found all over the district. The labours have to wait for months together for their wages. They are told that the muster roll entry has not been done.”

The district administration claims that there is no delay in payment in MGNREGS. But, in practice, the delay is found everywhere. The officials unofficially justify the delay by arguing that the daily income of a labourer in earth work as per measurement exceeds his daily wage. But the excess income cannot be shown in the muster roll and is carried over to the next day. Such carrying over of excess amounts accumulates when a labour works continuously till the end of the work. The delay occurs when such excess wages are adjusted in non-working days by generating fake muster rolls, they claimed.

However, the online data in the MGNREGA website shows that there are at least 698 cases in the district during the financial year 2012-13 where the wage paid as per measurement to the labourers has exceeded the daily wage rate. Some workers have even earned as much as Rs 252 per day.

Grievance redressal mechanism of the job scheme hardly works in the district. The labourers who have not received their wage have repeatedly approached the BDO of Khariar for payment. “We have lodged our grievance before the BDO, Khariar in grievance form “A”, but there is no action,” say a few labourers of Kusmal.

The situation is worse in case of the work undertaken by the line departments. The workers who have worked under the horticulture department of the district have not received their wage since September 2012. The documents obtained from the horticulture through Right to Information Act reveal that there are 483 labourers in the district who have not received their wage amounting t

o more than Rs 14 lakh.

“We took up plantation in anticipation of financial sanction of the District Collector. But the files are pending in the district,” says the Additional Director of Horticulture of Nuapada district.

“I have lodged a grievance in the horticulture office at Khariar in favour of the labourers, but they have not responded,” says Khirasindhu Sagaria who is an RTI activist of Nuapada district.

“Due to such lackadaisical attitudes of the officials, the programme has been suffering several drawbacks with people losing their faith in the scheme,” says Ghanashyam Bhitria, a member of Krushak Sakti Sangathana.