Minister's remark on NREGS politically motivated: Mohanty

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Bhubaneswar, June 22: Orissa Panchayati Raj Minister Raghunath Mohanty today denied any deviation in the functioning of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in the state and termed Union labour Minister Chandra Sekhar Sahu's remark in this regard as ''politically motivated''.

Talking to newspersons, Mr Mahanty said the Union Minister had made the statement without verifying the implementation of the scheme which has been working successfully in 19 of the total 30 districts.

The Union Minister, he said, had raised the issue in view of the coming Panchayat elections in the state.

The Panchayati Raj Minister said the NREGS is being implemented in 205 blocks spreading over 33,000 villages registering 26.96 lakh families as per the central guidelines.

Contrary to Union Minister's statement that job cards were not issued in a majority of cases, Mr Mohanty said as many as 19.89 lakhs job cards were issued of which 10.40 lakhs had demanded the job and the government provided jobs to 9.60 lakhs families.

He also refuted Mr Sahu's allegation that the state government had not undertaken any awareness campaign about the programme saying that right from the state level to the Block level several workshops conferences and training programmes were carried out to apprise the persons on the implementation of the programme.

Mr Mohanty said during the past four months, the state government had spent about Rs 57.31 crores out of total Rs 363.93 crores sanctioned by the Centre and completed 3342 projects against the administrative approval of 19,414 projects.

The Panchayati Raj Minister claimed that Union Panchayati Raj Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar who recently reviewed the NREGS in Orissa, expressed his satisfaction over the implementation even in presence of members of Planning Commission. CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan had also joined hands with the Union Labour Minister saying that the NREGS had miserably failed at many places in the state.

Mr Bardhan said during his visit to some of the areas, he had come across machines being used in the scheme in clear violation of the norms and guidelines while the wage component paid under the scheme was very low in comparison to the daily wages fixed by the government.

The Panchayati Raj Minister admitted the low wage components to the beneficiary under the scheme and said the state government was actively considering the revision of wage schedule rate to overcome the problem.

He said the state government would soon appoint ''rojgar sevaks' in each panchayat and a junior engineer for four panchayats to oversee the works excuted under the NREGS.

On Mr Bardhan's allegation of using machines in the scheme, the Panchayati Raj Minister said he had not received any such complaint from any quarters but assured to conduct an inquiry into such allegations.

UNI

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