Following persistent demands from the State, the Union Government has revised its recent order limiting the number of works that can be taken up simultaneously under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in a panchayat. Minister for Local Self Governments M.B. Rajesh said that the Union Ministry of Rural Development has informed the State Government that the number of works that can be taken up in Kerala has been increased from the earlier 20 to 50 now.
The State Government had conveyed to the Ministry that limiting the number of works to 20 was a huge setback to the State. The decision would have an impact on the labour sector and local economic development. It was against the programme’s essence of providing 100 workdays a year to families. In August, the then LSG Minister M.V.Govindan had pointed out that the conditions in Kerala differed from that in other States. The population of one panchayat in some other States could be found in one panchayat ward here. Each panchayat in the State had 13 to 23 such wards.
The demand of workers was met by simultaneously taking up multiple works in a ward. Even if one work was taken up in a ward, activities would get done only in 20 wards. In others, no work could be taken up. Mr.Rajesh said that even though the Union Ministry has now revised the order, even the limit of 50 works in a panchayat is not suitable for a State like Kerala, which has been a model for the country in MGNREGS implementation.
The Union Government is also yet to pay the pending amount in material costs for several months. Many workers and vendors could not be paid due to issues related to the Public Financial Management System (PFMS). The Union Government has also allocated only a small portion of the funding for social auditing of MGNREGS. Even though Kerala had completed 10 crore person days of work in the previous year, it has been allocated only 6 crore person days of work in the current financial year, out of which 4.66 crore person days of work has been completed in the first seven months.
