Women get 52% jobs under NREGA in Gujarat

New Delhi, Apr 20 (UNI) Gujarat has given women a major proportion of employment generated under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act last year with 52.51 per cent of 84.57 lakh persondays employment going to the fair sex.

The NREGA provides that 1/3rd of the employment provided should be given to women. Among those seeking employment and getting it 6.65 per cent belonged to the Scheduled Castes and 61.04% to Scheduled Tribes.

In the state, 1.79 lakh households have demanded employment and all of them have been provided it up to February 2007. The average number of households provided employment in each of the six district of the State where NREGA was implemented in first phase was 25,536, while the national average is 91,685 households.

In Gujarat, 0.08 lakh households have completed the 100 days guarantee of employment provided in the Act. The average person days of employment provided in a district is 14.09 lakh compared to the national average of 36.47 lakh person days. The employment was provided on 7,409 works, of which 2,796 have been completed. The average number of works taken up in a district stood at 1,235 against the national average of 3,581.

An amount of Rs. 67.44 crore has been released to the State during 2006-07. The state has also set up Grievance Redressal Mechanism under the Act. Now NREGA would be implemented in three more districts of the state in the second phase in 2007-08.

UNI