Rs 198.8 Cr MGNREGS Central share released

By Our Staff Reporter

IMPHAL, May 4: The Ministry of Rural Development has released Rs 198.80 crore as the Central share for the first tranche of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) for Manipur.

MGNREGS is a scheme which aims to provide not less than 100 days of employment to the poor people of rural areas.

According to a reliable source, the State RD Department is also pressuring the State Finance Department to sanction a proportionate State share, to the tune of 10 percent of the Central share (which is around Rs 22.08 crore) at the earliest. If the said amount is sanctioned the State Government will have a total of Rs 220.89 crore for the scheme.

This has raised expectation that the State Government will be able to provide around 16 days of employment to the job card holders for the first two-three months of the financial year 2019-20.

The source continued that on March 26, the Ministry of Rural Development released Rs 17,38,70,000 as Central assistance for the 2nd Tranche of 2018-19.

Then on April 8, the Ministry released Rs 181,42,18,000 as 1st Tranche for the financial year 2019-20, which brings the total sanctioned amount to Rs 198.80 crore.

The source informed that for the previous financial year 2018-19, a total of Rs 339.50 crore (including Rs 286.98 as Central share) was sanctioned and the job card holders of the State were given employment for 22 days.

Pointing out that Manipur has 5.5 lakh active job card holders, the source explained that the main focus areas of MGNREGS are water conservation, sanitary latrines, Anganwadi centres, planting of trees on the roadside.

However, when it came to Manipur, the inefficiency of the works under the scheme, had even forced the Ministry to monitor the situation in the past, the source added.

Even though MGNREGS is implemented under proper guidelines, the pattern in Manipur is suspicious to say the least as the employment period or number of days in which job card holders get employment, seem to be similar at all locations.

On the other hand, the source informed that the works normally done under MGNREGS in Manipur in the past like weeding, sweeping etc have been classified as negative works and it is reported that these kind of works will be phased out completely from the scheme.

The source explained that under the scheme, planning, forming labour budget for the Panchayat or the village, GIS mapping etc should be done first and during the planning stage, the works to be done have to be uploaded to the Ministry website through Bhuvan platform by the SO/Engineer which will facilitate proper fund sanction.

Works to be done under MGNREGS used to be estimated by the SO/Engineers in the past but from this year, the estimate will be calculated on-line through a specialised software called Software for Estimate Calculation Using Rural Rates of Employment (SECURE) which was produced by the Ministry.

Nowadays, wages of the job card holders are also done through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), the source added.

The source explained that such fund transfer are done for the 4 valley districts through Public Fund Management System (PFMS) although the said system is yet to be implemented properly in the hill districts mainly due to lack of proper internet connectivity.

Speaking about the fund sanction, the source conveyed that the photos of the work (planning, work and completion stage) will be geotagged and uploaded to the website and the funds are sanctioned only when the photo are approved.

The source continued if the State Government properly utilises the sanctioned funds , the utilisation certificate can be sent to the Ministry on time so that additional funds can be sanctioned in the future and the number of employment days for the job card holders can be increased.

Informing that Rs 25 crore has been set aside as the matching State share for MGNREGS in the 2019-20 budget estimate, the source mentioned that in the previous year, the daily wage under MGNREGS was Rs 209 while now it is Rs 216 per day.