Hyderabad: While the Supreme Court has rapped the Central and some state governments on Thursday for their ‘non-seriousness’ approach on tackling drought, the situation is no different in TS, where the state government has failed to release wages of NREGS workers for the last two months.
NREGS plays a crucial role in providing the much-needed relief to people in villages during drought by providing employment for 150 days so that they are not forced to migrate to urban areas in search of livelihood.
However, delay in payment of wages has dented this goal, with people being forced to migrate to Mumbai, Hyderabad and other cities from the districts in search of livelihood.
Barring Hyderabad, NREGS is being implemented in the nine remaining districts of TS. Normally, nine lakh agriculture workers and labourers take up NREGS works in villages, but due to non-payment of wages for the past two months, the number has come down to less than 2 lakh.
Despite the Centre releasing Rs 550 crore for NREGS in August last year, officials are facing shortage of funds to pay the wages. This is because the state government has not only failed to release its 10 per cent share of funds due to financial constraints, but has also diverted a portion of Central funds to fund its various schemes.
With this, the Panchayat Raj department has become helpless, and unable to pay the wages. PR & RD minister K.T. Rama Rao had recently told the TS Assembly that the shortage of funds was only due to Budgetary adjustments during the conclusion of previous financial year in March and the arrears would be cleared in April, the beginning of the new financial year.
