Hyderabad: National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was started fourteen years back in the country with the aim of providing work for farm labourers in their native villages for one hundred days a year to ensure livelihood for them. It is the only hope to the migrant workers now, who have returned to their villages after the outbreak of corona and the subsequent lockdowns and loss of employment in the country.
The unfortunate labourers who returned homes with not even one hundred rupees in the hands constitute 64% of the total migrant workers. 90 percent of workers were not paid any wages for the period of their work prior to the imposition of the lockdown and setback to life. That is why the number of people trying to make a new beginning with the help of the employment guarantee scheme on returning home is growing day by day. While nine crore workers expect work through this scheme, the central government declared the other day that it was able to provide work to only 7.5 crore people….that too at an average of 46 days a year.
The latest figures show that out of the 4.33 crore people who sought employment this month, only fifty per cent could get the work. The number of job seekers under the employment guarantee scheme will increase for some time to come.
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As per the revised estimates for 2019-20, the expenditure on employment guarantee scheme is estimated to be around Rs 71,000 crores. In the recent budget, the Center, which had curtailed it to 10,000 crores, has raised it to 40,000 crores under "Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan" scheme.
The Centre has calculated that it can create employment for 300 crore working days in the employment guarantee account of the centre that exceeds one lakh crore rupees. The employment guarantee scheme should be expanded to meet the growing demand.
In these extraordinary circumstances, the government should put aside the budget limits and help these destitute migrant workers suffering from the loss of employment and are back home due to corona.
Touted by the World Bank as the largest public works programme in the world, the central employment guarantee scheme has attracted severe criticism for its inefficient implementation. The Parliamentary Standing Committee has criticized that the scheme was riddled with false accounting, counterfeit bills, and false bank accounts and had become a good earning tool in the hands of the cheats. Though it is assured that special measures have been taken to avoid delays in the payment of wages for months, the arrears are still pegged at Rs. 8,500 crores.
In order to ensure that the employment guarantee is a mitigating factor for migrant workers, it is important to check and finalize accounts promptly and give priority to cash payments. Though the practice of providing timely work to those enrolled in the e-muster within the deadline is continuing, priority must be given to those needy workers who have travelled thousands of kilometres to reach hometowns risking their lives. Procedures must be streamlined to make payments by the evening itself.
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The Finance Minister has announced that planting of horticulture and gardening saplings will be undertaken in monsoon under the employment guarantee scheme. States like Telangana say that they will link employment guarantee to forest planting work. There are also differences in wages by state. Bihar and Jharkhand are paying Rs 171 while Punjab and Karnataka are paying above Rs.240.
Governments should implement the scheme free of corruption by reasonably revising the wages and relaxing the period of hundred days until the situation improves. The rules and regulations must be strengthened to ensure meaningful participation of the labourers in the nation-building activity.
