Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Early Times Report
Srinagar, Jan 21: The Jammu and Kashmir has been least benefitted by the much hyped Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) that was aimed to provide employment across the country.
The successive government at the Centre has claimed that it was committed to provide employment through MGNREGA across the country. The J&K government established SGEF in 2008 with an aim to ensure proper implementation of MGNREGA, a centrally sponsored scheme meant to provide manual work to rural people. Under the scheme, it is mandatory to provide 100-days of work within five-km to the job seekers.
However, the official figures reveal that J&K has remained one of the poor performers under the prestigious flagship programme despite receiving a huge funding from the Centre. They said the Centre had blocked funds for some districts of the state due to poor implementation of the scheme and complaints about the fund embezzlements.
The figures reveal that by the end of year 2014, the state had provided work to only 27 percent job seekers while as 73 percent didn't benefit from the scheme.
The figures said that state has provided nearly 27 lakh job cards to the rural population under the Act in four three years. Ironically, out of them only 61 thousand people got the complete 100 days of employment, which the Act guarantees.
"During 2015, very a small percentage has got benefitted by the scheme. The Centre also withholds the funds due to poor implementation of the scheme and embezzlement in funds," a senior official said.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the government at the Centre was committed to ensuring employment through MGNREGA across the country.
"Our government is committed to supporting employment through MGNREGA. We will ensure that no one who is poor is let without employment," he said.
In 2013, figures reveal that around 9 lakh job cards were issued in J&K, 4,92191 were provided employment and only 32,541 competed 100 days of working.
Sources said the scheme has turned a failure due to lack of interest of the state government in implementation of the scheme and embezzlement of funds.
"The government should order a transparent probe where the money has gone as majority job seekers didn't avail any benefit from the scheme," official sources said.
Sources said the Centre had slammed the state over poor implementation of the MGNREGA and found lapses in executing the scheme in J&K.
"Despite receiving crores of rupees from the Centre under this scheme, only a small portion of the state population got benefit from it over the years," an official of Rural Development Department said.
The Centre government according to sources was also mulling to give a digital boost to the flagship programme to ensure its implementation through mobile monitoring system. |
