46K NREGS workers yet to get wage of Rs 16.69 cr Saturday, 13 February 2021 | AJIT PANDA | NUAPADA

Namuna Chinda of Kholi village in Nagpada Panchayat is engaged in land development work started by the district administration last week. She is lifting earth of five by ten feet pits on four sides her plot to make an embankment.

The embankment will help conserve rain water in each plot that will help her cultivate paddy in the land that she got under FRA. "It needed leveling and bunds; we are doing it with our family labour under MGNREGA," says Namuna. "The officials have assured us of Rs 500 per pit of ten by ten (100 sq. ft.)," she adds. In last one week with three working persons in her family she has dug 12 pits of hundred square feet each that will fetch her Rs 6,000 in total. "The family will earn Rs 900 per day in an average and it is certainly a good amount to motivate the family not to migrate," says Jaisingh Chinda of the village further informing that most households in village migrate to the southern States to work in brick kilns due to lack of regular employment in village.

Twenty-five families of Kholi village have been selected for land development work in about 30 acres of land this year - ten by Panchayat and the rest by the District Watershed Mission.

The beneficiaries expect that they would produce at least 8 to 10 quintals of paddy per acre next year after the land is developed. "This is what we have been demanding since long; the land development work has been done in a compact patch, which would help us check run-off in a better way," says Jaisingh.  The MGNREGS in Nuapada remained a great source of employment for migrant returnees during Covid between April and July last year. As wage payment was timely and regular, workers were virtually glued to the MGNREGS projects.

Per day employment generation reached 56,000 person days in July. "Providing job to such a huge number of job seekers which constituted one third of total main work force in the district is certainly a great achievement," says Jitendra Pattnaik of SAI, an NGO working in Kholi village and other remote villages of the district. The trend of timely payment however declined after July and at the end of October the non-paid wage in the district stood at about Rs 8 crore.

 "The same trend has started again now; the outstanding wage is Rs 16.69 crore at present and the number of workers yet to get their wages stands at 46,000. We are facing the wrath of workers due to delay in wage payment," says an APO of the district.

The dues for Nuapada block is the highest Rs 4.20 crore. For Boden block it is Rs 2.49 crore, Rs 2.70 crore for Khariar, Rs 3.79 crore for Komna and Rs 3.51 crore for Sinapali block.