MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT (SHRI PRADEEP JAIN ‘ADITYA’)
(a)to(e) A statement is laid on the Table of the House.
Statement as referred to in reply to parts (a) to (e) of Lok Sabha Starred Question No. 149 for answer on 07.03.2013.
(a) Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is demand based.Para 1
of Schedule-II of MGNREGA stipulates that adult members of every household who reside in rural areas and are willing to do unskilled manual work may apply for registration of their household
for issuance of a job card to be eligible to apply for work under MGNREGA. However, under the Act, mere issuance of a job card does not entitle a household to receive employment. Under Para 9 of Schedule II of the Act, the household also has to submit application for work to be entitled to receive employment and employment is provided on demand. As per Section 3 (1) of the Act, it is for the concerned State Government to provide to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work up to one hundred days of such work in a financial year in accordance
with the Scheme made under the Act. Demand for employment under MGNREGA is dependent upon
several external factors including availability of alternate employment opportunities.
(b)to(d) The details of average number of workdays of employment generated, percentage of participation of SCs, STs and women in total employment generated, expenditure incurred under MGNREGA from 2009-10 onwards as reported by the states are given in Annexure.
(e) Steps taken for effective implementation of MGNREGA, inter alia, are the following:
(i) Keeping in view the challenges in implementation in MGNREGA permissible administrative expenditure limit was enhanced from 4% to 6% for deployment of dedicated staff for MGNREGA, strengthening management and administrative support structures for maintenance of records,
social audit, grievance redressal and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure.
(ii) Use of information technology to automate the manual processes is promoted.
(iii) Payment of wages in cash has been allowed in IAP districts to obviate payment delays where outreach of Banks/Post Offices is inadequate, as an interim arrangement subject to certain conditions.
(iv) To strengthen the institutional outreach for wage disbursement, it has been decided that State Governments should roll out the Business Correspondent Model to make wage payment through Banks with Bio-metric authentication at village level.
(v) States have been instructed to establish State Employment Guarantee Funds for greater flexibility in management of funds for MGNREGA.
(vi) Ministry has initiated an ‘Electronic Fund Management System’ (e-FMS) in four states.
The system will be rolled out in a phased manner across the country.
(vii) Various advisories have been issued to States/UTs to check delays in payments. A time schedule for payment of wages has been suggested to the States/UTs to reduce administrative delays.
(viii) To facilitate disbursal of wages, provision has been made in NREGASoft for seeding of Aadhaar numbers in the database. This database may be later used for the purpose of workers’ authentication for attendance and payments.
(ix) The list of permissible works under MGNREGA has been expanded with a focus to strengthen the synergy between MGNREGA and rural livelihoods, particularly agriculture, and create durable quality assets.
