It is taking more than thrice the stipulated time period for the Central government to disburse wages to labourers from Telangana who worked under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme during the year 2021-22, a study report says. The duration of wait for the workers from SC category is longer as per the study.
Libtech India, a study group analysing implementation of the MGNREG scheme’s implementation, has randomly selected 138 panchayats from the State for the study, and worked on the downloaded details of payments for all the job card holders who appeared for work in the financial year up to January 18.
Among its findings, the study has noted that on an average, the Central government is taking 24 days to clear stage 2 payments for Telangana.
According to the MGNREG Act, 2005, workers are entitled to receive their wages within a fortnight of the date of the closure of the muster roll. In case the payment is not made within the time, the wage seeker is entitled for a payment of compensation at the rate of 0.05% of the unpaid wages per each day of delay beyond the sixteenth day of closure of muster rolls.
The payment process has two stages, the first to be carried out by the State government, and the second by the Centre. During the stage-I, fund transfer order (FTO) is generated by the State government and sent to the Centre online. In stage-II, it is the Central government’s job to process the FTO and transfer wages directly to the workers’ accounts.
As per the guidelines, Stage-I should be completed in eight days and stage-II must be completed within a week after that. In the absence of availability of data pertaining to the stage-I processing, the study limited its analysis to stage-II alone, the study report noted.
Out of 2.16 lakh downloaded transactions for the year up to January 18, 9% of the transactions were still unpaid. Hence, the analysis was limited to 1.97 lakh transactions across the 138 panchayats.
As per the findings, a total 24.6% or 48,594 transactions have taken more than 30 days for payment from the date of uploading of FTO. Percentage of transactions cleared before a week is 16.8%, as against 66% in the year 2020-21 and 72.2% in 2019-20.
The stage-II clearance for the SC category took 31 days on an average, highest among the caste groups. Interestingly, clearance of the payments followed the caste hierarchy -- 23 days for STs, 21 days for BCs, and 20 days for others.
The study surmises that the variation in the number of days across different caste groups is associated with the controversial order by the Central government, to the States in the month of March, 2021, asking them to categorise the payments based on caste.
Later in the month of November, the order was withdrawn, but the software changes already made were not reversed. However, it still remains ambiguous how the software could have come in the way of payments to SCs, says Chakradhar Buddha, one among the five in the study group for Telangana.
According to recent reports, pending wage liabilities of MGNREGA work as on January 27,2022 stood at more than ₹3,358.14 crore.
