Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme beneficiaries seek more work

Hyderabad: Struggling to make their both ends meet, the unemployed in villages are seeking raise in the number of person days in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) from the next financial year. Beneficiaries of the MNREG urged the Central government team which visited the villages recently to raise the number of person days from 100 to 150 to get more income.

The rise in the person days would ensure an increase of their wages by 50 per cent. Under the NREG, it has been mandated to provide 100 days of person days for each beneficiary in their own villages. However, the average number of person days is quite less and it has not been crossing 70 per each beneficiary, according to the villagers. Each worker of NREG is getting about

Rs 9,000 on the average every year as the average wage per day is Rs 140. This income is quite low, and the workers are unable to eke out livelihood with this meager income. As the works in the villages are seasonal and are not available due to farm mechanisation and other factors, the unemployed are depending on the NREGS to get some income.

In most of the districts, agriculture works have come to an end and workers are left with no job to do. In the State as many as 1.12 crore unemployed people depend on the scheme in this financial year and out of them, 60 lakh have been actively participating in works. About 10 crore person days are provided so far in 2017-18.

In the present financial year, as much as Rs 1,400 crore has been spent on the programme as wages. The workers are not provided with mandatory person days and the aver age number of person days is hovering between 60 and 70 per year. The average number of person days per household is about 42.

Though workers are supposed to be given works under 52 categories, the officials are allegedly neglecting norms and leading to reduction in the number of person days to work seekers. In this scenario, the unemployed have been demanding the governments to increase the number of person days from the existing 100 to 150 and also provision of works under all the categories.

The raise would take their income up to Rs 14,000 per annum. The State government has also demanded the Centre in the previous financial year to raise the number of person days from 100 to 150 for the next financial year for improvement in the lives of rural unemployed.