‘Delay in wage payment by Centre adding to NREGA workers’ woes’

As of August 10 this year, 34% transactions are still unpaid, says LibTech study

Delay on the part of the Union Government in transfer of wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), 2005, has further compounded the woes of thousands of workers during these difficult pandemic times. The Centre is taking 26 days on an average to complete the wage transfer to the NREGA workers in Andhra Pradesh, thrice as long to process the payments than it should, according to a sample study conducted by LibTech (Liberation Technology), an organisation comprising social scientists working to improve transparency, accountability and democratic engagement in rural public services delivery. “Considering the 13th report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and other official documents reporting that no compensation was paid for delay of payments to the NREGA workers in Andhra Pradesh for the financial years 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22, we randomly sampled 1% of panchayats in the State (130 of the 12,956 panchayats) by downloading details of wage payments for all the job cards that appeared for work in the current financial year (2021) up to July 31,” said Chakradhar Buddha, Director, LibTech, for Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.