Jan 30, New Delhi: The Government is likely to take up the issue of poor performance on its ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) by some states in the meeting of the state chief secretaries with cabinet secretary K M Chandrasekhar on Saturday.
According to sources, states such as Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Manipur and mizoram have emerged as performing states as they have utilised nearly 60 per cent of their labour budget projections, while those where the outreach of the programme is low include Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Kerala till December 2008-09. Among the states that have shown more than 30 per cent decline in providing employment to households upto December are Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Uttarakhand, while those showing marginal decline (less than 10 per cent) are Orissa and Chhattisgarh.
Similarly states where the number of households provided employment is less than 70 per cent of BPL households include Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Jammu and Kashmir, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. Rural development ministry sources said the key reasons behind some states under-performing were insufficient dedicated staff to NREGP.
In Bihar, 25 per cent blocks do not have programme officers and have insufficient technical personnel.
Around 20 per cent of the gram panchayats are devoid of Gram Rozgar Sahayaks and only 556 programme officers have been appointed against the sanctioned post of 753 in Uttar Pradesh.
In 2007-08, of the total Rs 19305.81 crore released, only Rs 15856.89 crore have been utilised. In 2008-09 (upto December), of the total Rs 26307.76 crore release, only about Rs 17076.18 crore have been utilised.