MGNREGS: State Panchayats minister meets Giriraj Singh, pushes for clearance of dues

kolkata: State Panchayats and Rural Development (P&RD) minister Pradip Mazumdar on Monday held a meeting with his counterpart Giriraj Singh in New Delhi pushing for payment of wages of MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) workers.

Seven months have elapsed in the current fiscal but the Centre has not disbursed a single penny in connection with MGNREGS for Bengal. According to Nabanna sources, Rs 6740 crore is due as wages for MGNREGS and work for roads spanning 2026 km is stalled because of lack of funds."The discussion has been good and he (Singh the Union minister for Panchayati Raj) has said that he will do the needful in this regard. But we are not convinced until the funds are released,"Mazumdar said.

According to sources, Singh has told Mazumdar that he will soon speak with officials in his ministry and take necessary action in this regard. The state government has already submitted an action taken report (ATR) eight times as per queries by the Union ministry.

Chief Secretary HK Dwivedi on Friday issued a circular urging all departments to engage only unskilled labourers having MGNREGS job cards for the execution of their various schemes.

Till Friday, 15 departments have engaged 28.44 lakh job card holders with mandays generated to the tune of 5.18 crore and wages paid have been Rs 1147.05 crore. As per Nabanna sources, there are presently 1.08 crore job card holders in the state.

The engagement of 100 days workers in different works started in May after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee instructed the administration to take measures for engaging more job card holders in government projects so that they do not suffer because of deprivation of their wages by the Centre.

The departments that have engaged job card holders are namely — P&RD, School Education, Irrigation, North Bengal Development, Public Works, Public Health Engineering, Water Resources Investigation, Forest, Fisheries, Agriculture, Women and Child Development,

Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education, Backward Classes Welfare, Urban Development and Municipal Affairs and Paschimanchal Unnayan