Shillong, June 17: The implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Meghalaya has run into several bottlenecks, according to an evaluation report.
The NREGS is a central scheme, which has the provision to provide job cards with a daily wage of Rs 70 to the people who can take up specified work in their localities.
The annual report of the NREGS for 2008-2009 released by the Meghalaya government pointed out that field experience reveals that the unskilled wage rate offered at Rs 70 found fewer takers in the areas where the normal wage rate is higher.
According to the report, as in some blocks there are no full-fledged block development officers (BDOs), extension officers are given temporary charge, which hampers the implementation of the programme.
“This results in poor performance in terms of man days achieved by districts, especially Jaintia Hills and West Khasi Hills,” the report said.
Moreover, lack of technical assistants also delays the preparation of estimates for the nature of work to be undertaken.
“Measurement of work is also delayed resulting in delay of payment of wages. This is a major hindrance for the implementation,” said the report, adding that absence of a reliable Internet connection in the block levels also makes data redundant as the blocks are using the offline software.
The area employment councils (AECs) and village employment councils (VECs), which were established for the smooth implementation of the project are not well equipped to maintain the numerous amount of paper work,” the report said.
The members of the two councils who are employed elsewhere express difficulty in managing the travel fare while visiting the block or district offices and also on the loss of the daily wage on days when they are called for the NREGS-related work, according to the report. The wage earners under the NREGS, particularly in the rural areas, find it difficult to avail the wages that is being routed through post offices and banks.
Low penetration of banks and post offices in the rural areas also makes the wage earners travel long distances to collect their wages.
At present, there are eight blocks where there are no banks.
Another hurdle is the unavailability of community lands for the NREGS work, which delays the implementation of land development and irrigation work in some areas.
“A proper reporting system is necessary to enable a transparent and effective implementation of all programmes,” the report said.
The Union ministry of rural development has developed an IT-based solution through which an effective monitoring can be carried out, it added.
The introduction of this system came towards the end of 2007-2008 and therefore 2008-2009 showed a better response in creating awareness among the implementing agencies, the report said.