-The Telegraph
Sonia Gandhi decried corruption in the rural jobs scheme as a “crime against the poor”, the words coming on a day the Supreme Court cancelled over 100 graft-tainted 2G licences.
“We cannot ignore cases of corruption in this scheme. Corruption in MGNREGA is a crime against the poor people,” the Congress chief said at a programme organised here to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the scheme. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also attended the event.
The scheme, a brainchild of the Sonia-led National Advisory Council (NAC), was launched on February 2, 2006, initially in 200 districts and later extended to 626 across the country.
Sonia’s remarks came against the backdrop of alleged irregularities in the plan in many states, including Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand.
Although the scheme lays down that a minimum 60 per cent of the expenditure on projects built under the scheme should be on labour, some states engage machines and cut down on the number of workers. The CBI is investigating such irregularities in Odisha.
In Uttar Pradesh, a petition has been filed in Allahabad High Court seeking a CBI probe into financial irregularities.
The Prime Minister also spoke on the occasion but appeared to attribute the problems to systemic causes.
“The scheme faces a major problem of delayed payments to workers. The workers are getting payments through the banks and post offices. Since the banks and the postal department have not strong presence in certain areas, the workers have to travel long distances to get wages. In some districts, the wage payments are delayed by six to seven months. The poor people lose interest in the programme,” Singh said.
The post offices and banks have to expand their networks, he said, and urged states to give the unemployment allowance for failure to provide work.
At present, 12.07 crore people have been given job cards under the scheme, which aims to provide 100 days of guaranteed wage employment every financial year. In case of failure to provide work, unemployment allowance should be paid within 15 days of the application for work.
Till December 2011, 3.77 crore households had benefited. The government has allocated Rs 40,000 crore this financial year for the scheme.
However, the beneficiaries complain that they are not getting the full 100 days of work. The annual average has remained less than 50, except in 2009-10 when the figure was 54.
Sonia suggested, though, that despite the problems, the scheme was a success, saying it had improved the condition of people in rural areas and has checked distress migration to a great extent.
