PAEG & Nrega Sangharsh Morcha release pre -budget statement

Aditya V Singh.

New Delhi. Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) and NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) release a pre-budget statement on NREGA in view of the announcement of the financial budget for FY 2023-24.

The statement stated that an estimated Rs. 2,71,862 crores would be required as a budget allocation for FY 2023-24 for NREGA if all the workers who worked in the current year were to be given 100 days of work. The statement also focuses on other issues affecting NREGA, namely social audits, wage delays and the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app. It also asserts that work and payment of wages under NREGA, which have been stopped for more than a year in West Bengal under the garb of corruption, must be resumed immediately.
Nikhil Dey from Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan said that if the government sees NREGA as a demand-based program and according to the law, the labourers must get 100 days of work on the basis of demand, then the budget of NREGA for the year 2023-2024 should be 2,73,000 crores rupees. At present, the budget allocated for NREGA which is 73,000 crore rupees, is less than one-third of the required amount for NREGA, due to the non-allocation of sufficient funds for NREGA, the work demand of NREGA workers is not being met by the states. In this way we see that NREGA workers are being punished as well as ignored by the Central Government.

Ashish Ranjan from Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan, Bihar drew the attention of the press to how the central government is trying to eliminate NREGA through continuous changes. Instead of this, the central government should focus on doing structural reforms in NREGA, and should focus on such states where administration is not so strong through which NREGA can operate successfully. For its effective implementation, the administrative system should focus on resolving the issue of unfilled panchayat office positions in states over the years. He said that 40% of such posts are vacant in Bihar, which should be filled immediately. Instead of improving such structure, the government is engaged in re-evaluation of NREGA, behind which the intention is to create hurdles for NREGA. Ashish added that the government has not paid wages in West Bengal for one year by making the issue of corruption. On the other hand, under the leadership of Amarjit Sinha, such a committee has been formed, which will investigate the states which are in the most poor category for NREGA. NREGA can be obstructed in the same way as it has been done in Bengal, by making an issue that more money is being spent in one state as compared to other states. Along with this, he criticised the attendance being taken by the NMMS app as complicating the process.

Anne Raja from the National Federation for Indian Women, highlighted the importance of the process of social audit provisioning under the NREGA Act, and how social audit has proven to be a compromise to eliminate corruption in NREGA. For this, he gave examples of successful social audits done in the early days, and criticised the central government, saying that the Modi government first does not allocate any budget for social audit and without doing social audit, states are accused of corruption for not giving money, which is completely contradictory.
Vijay from Peoples’ Action for Employment Guarantee informed everyone about the ongoing havoc of the NMMS app. Vijay said that first of all, the government does not pay the workers for the work done on time and with this, when it makes attendance mandatory through the NMMS app, it becomes necessary for the workers to have Android mobiles, it is like a double whammy on the workers. On the other hand, there is no system to register attendance offline as an alternative to online attendance, due to which attendance missed due to lack of network in rural areas is not recorded again. In this way, a large number of labourers are being deprived of their right to work.