The Union government has not been paying the material costs incurred under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) works in Kerala over the past several months, with the outstanding amount now reaching a massive ₹436 crore. Additionally, administrative funds to the tune of ₹93 crore and wage for unskilled labourers totaling ₹197 crore are also due to be paid to the State.
"Since August last year, the funds for materials have not been transferred from the Union government, due to which outstanding bills for vendors could not be settled. This has also led to people depending on contractors, who are not usually allowed in the MGNREGS system. The dependency on contractors at times affects the quality of the assets created. They will also employ their own people, who are not necessarily from the same panchayat, which goes against the whole idea of the MGNREGS," says an official of the State MGNREGS Mission.
Meanwhile, the Union government last week hiked the wage rate for MGNREGS workers in Kerala from ₹291 to ₹311 per day after three years. Though the percentage increase is the highest for Kerala compared to most other States, MGNREGS State Mission officials as well as activists maintain that the hike is insufficient compared to the prevailing wage rates.
"We have been raising demands for a wage rate hike for the past three years. The State Employment Guarantee Council has also been raising the demand. The hike that has been affected now is insufficient when you look at the prevailing wage rates in the market. The daily wage rate, even after the hike, is not comparable to the minimum wage for agricultural labourers in Kerala, which is close to ₹700. As per our understanding, the wage rate should at least be around ₹400," says an official.
As much as 10.56 crore person days of work were generated in 2021-22, up from the 10.23 crore person days generated in the year before that. The number of households which were provided work increased from 16.17 lakh to 16.43 lakh. The increasing demand for MGNREGS work points to the crisis in the jobs sector due to a slowdown in economic activity, which worsened post the COVID-19 outbreak.
The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) and the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) had also issued a joint statement against the wage rate hike which they termed abysmal. The workers' rights organisations have seen it as a continuation of the Union government's assault on the MGNREGS, which has got a lesser allocation in the Budget this year compared to last year's revised Budget. The thousands of crores of outstanding payments from the past year could make a considerable dent in the allocations for the current year.
