Centre may penalise officials for delay in NREGA payout

NEW DELHI: The Centre has asked states to penalise officials for any delay in disbursement in the flagship rural employment programme and compensate workers who do not get their entitlements on time.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has asked states to adopt two initiatives taken by Andhra Pradesh "to help secure entitlements for MGNREGA wage seekers". These comprise a system to accurately register demand for work, and pin responsibility and compensate workers for delays in paying wages.

The Andhra Pradesh government has made it clear that officials responsible for delay would be penalised. The guilty official has to bear the cost of compensating the affected workers.

The online software being used by the Andhra Pradesh government makes it possible to pinpoint the exact stage where the delay takes place and the official responsible for it. Workers are eligible for compensation at the rate of 0.3% per day for delays beyond 14 days from the first day of work.

To discourage holdups, the compensation due to the worker is deducted from the official's salary. The state has put out clear timelines for each function and official. Delays beyond these timelines would result in penalty for the concerned official.

Delay in payment of wages is one of the biggest problems that plagues the rural employment scheme.

The state has put in place a system to ensure greater accuracy in registering the demand for work, allocating work to NREGA workers and payment of unemployment allowance.

The system, which Ramesh would like all states to adopt, sets a clearly defined timelines for online registration of all applications demanding work, allocating work orders and intimating supervisors at the work site.

The Andhra Pradesh government has made it mandatory for officials in charge of implementing the employment programme in their area to prepare every week a comprehensive list of all applications demanding work by Saturday, and allot the work by Wednesday. All this has to be done online.

The programme officer in the area is also charged with preparing and verifying the list of households, who have not received work despite registering, and ensure that they are paid an unemployment allowance list. This allowance is paid directly into the workers' bank or post office account.