Hyderabad: Reverse migration from the urban areas to the villages during the pandemic has led to an increase in demand for work under MGNREGA, the rural jobs guarantee programme. according to an analysis of data performed by LibTech India, a team of engineers, social workers, and social scientists.
With another round of reverse migration starting during the second wave of the pandemic, the organisation requested the staet government to increase the number of work days above 100 under the programme.
According to its report, ‘MGNREGA implementation in Telangana for 2020-21’, there has been an increase of 507.2 lakh person days in employment for 2020-21 compared to the previous year, marking a 47.4 per cent rise.
Chakradhar Buddha, programme director, LibTech India, said, "In our field visits, we noticed that the full work assigned usually doesn’t happen. For instance, the stipulated wage for a worker per day is Rs 237 in Telangana state, and the worker finishes only half the work assigned for that day. Then the worker earns half the wage, or Rs 118.5," explained Buddha.
According to the report, workers from the state received Rs 2668.2 crore as wages, up 62 per cent over the previous year. They would have earned an additional Rs 1,000 crore if they would have completed the work.
He said that if Telangana followed the dual muster roll like in Andhra Pradesh, the state could generate more work and increase the income of the workers. Dual muster roll does not calculate person days based on work done in a day but looks at wages earned. If a person finishes 50 per cent work in one day and completes the rest on the second day, it is considered two days.
LibTech India in the report prepared by its team comprising Ajay Palle Swaero,Chakradhar Buddha,Kowsalya Alla, Laavanya Tamang, Naveen Gajjalagari, and Venkata Krishna Kagga, said increasing the number of work days beyond 100 would help lakhs of workers.
The report also ranked Telangana as the 10th worst state in terms of rejection of payment in MGNREGA. In addition to that, fake musters had increased due to absence of field assistants.
The Act mandates that workers be paid within 15 days of completion of work. However, wage payments often don’t reach the worker’s account due to technical reasons.
Venkat Krishna Kagga of LibTech India said "Technical errors in data entry and others are categorised as ‘rejected’ or ‘suspended’. Because of this, workers do not receive wages.
During 2020-21 51,575 job cards, the highest, were issued in Kamareddy district followed by Sangareddy and Ranga Reddy with 20,810 and 20,736 Kamareddy district had nearly doubled the number of persondays generated and had very few rejected payments. The state should follow what Kamareddy district administration is doing, said Kagga.
