Chennai: Chief Minister M K Stalin urged Union Minister of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Giriraj Singh, to personally intervene and ensure the disbursal of the pending Rs 1,678.83 crore dues to 24.41 lakh households in the State for those who worked under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for the period of December, 2023, to February, 2024.
In the letter to the Union Minister, Stalin said MGNREGS was one of the important Schemes for providing employment opportunity to all registered households in the rural areas and was the only Scheme providing livelihood opportunity to rural people as well as create durable and sustainable rural assets to improve the villages with the active participation of its own people.
In Tamil Nadu the scheme was implemented inclusively by providing 86% of the employment to women with 29% of total workers belonging to the SC/ST communities, he said.
The State had been a forerunner at the National level in providing employment to differently-abled people and had always been a top performer under various parameters since the inception of the scheme, he said.
So far, the Union Government had approved 37 crore persondays in three spells an up to March 6, 2024, Tamil Nadu had achieved 40.51 crore persondays as against the Labour Budget of 37 crore persondays by providing employment to 79.28 lakh workers from 68.68 lakh households, he said.
During 2023-24, an amount of Rs 8,734.32 crore was sanctioned to Tamil Nadu for the wages up to November 6, 2024 but only Rs 7,712.03 crore had been disbursed to the workers leaving a wage liability of Rs 1,022.29 crore for November 2023 and December 2023 as on January 5, 2024.
Stalin said that he had written a letter to Giriraj Singh for the early release of the wages on January 10 and the Union Government released wages of Rs1,388.91 crore on January 15 and 30.
However, since the wages for unskilled workers had not been disbursed to the since the last week of November 2023, the liability amount had accumulated to Rs.1,678.83 crore, he said and wanted the amount to be disbursed immediately.
