Wage payments of more than 1.75 lakh Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) workers in Kerala are pending due to Aadhaar linking-related issues.
The issues arose after the Union government made wage payment only through Aadhar-based accounts mandatory from February 1 onwards. The earlier option to get the wage transferred to the bank account has been discontinued. According to MGNREGS Mission officials in Kerala, the linking of bank accounts to the National Payments Corporation of India has failed for 1.75 lakh MGNREGS workers in the State.
A total of over 21 lakh MGNREGS wage cards have been issued in the State, with about 16 lakh workers out of them taking active participation. Wages are usually credited to the workers’ accounts every week.
“We had earlier completed Aadhar seeding of 99.5% of the MGNREGS workers. However, the issue arose for many in the linking of their accounts to the National Payments Corporation. Such a major change was implemented at the fag end of the financial year without any consultations. No guidelines have been issued to the banks on tackling issues that crop up. Issues related to wage payment are being reported from across the country now. The officials who put out such unilateral orders are not listening to the feedback from the ground and making the necessary changes. The non-payment of wages has caused some level of reluctance among workers to take up MGNREGS work,” said an MGNREGS official.
The implementation of the Public Financial Management System (PFMS), necessitating fund disbursal through a single account for the State MGNREGS, has also complicated matters. As many as 7,000 vendors have pending payments after its implementation as vendor IDs are yet to be generated for them. Material supply has been affected in some panchayats as vendors are reluctant to supply materials without clearing pending payments. According to officials, this has affected asset creation in some panchayats.
Kerala had achieved 10 crore person days of work in MGNREGS in the past two years. However, the issues that have been caused by recent changes has led to doubts on whether the the State will achieve that target in the current year.
