The Tamil Nadu government has finally decided to dispense with the existing practice of disbursing the wages to the workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in cash, switching to a bank payout model, in a bid to plug the holes in the disbursement process as well as to avoid middlemen.
The government was facing flak for stopping bank payouts for workers employed under MGNREGS, for quite some time now. The Centre and a host of NGOs had been critical of the state?s practice of cash payments as they thought the money might not reach the poor.
According to sources in the government, the payment of wages by banks through banking correspondents (BCs) will start from April end in 4,446 village panchayats where BCs have already been appointed. Similarly, in another 6,837 panchayats, where the population is between 1,001-2,000, bank payout system will be start after May. In the remaining panchayats, where population is below 1,000, the payments will be done by adopting alternative methods such as post offices or panchayat-level federations or even through banks that are willing to extend the BC model.
?It has been decided that the wages to the beneficiaries will be disbursed through the banks in a phased manner with the objective of curtailing any scope for malpractices and to separate the wage disbursement agency from implementing agency,? an official said on condition of anonymity. In Tamil Nadu, the MGNREGS was first notified in 2006 in six districts, which was subsequently extended to other districts in a phased manner, reaching to around 30 districts.
The state has devised steps for the smooth transition of the payment system. Accordingly, bank accounts have been opened by 94,12,748 MGNREGS workers, which is 82% of the registered workers. ?The government is committed to resorting to efficient fund transfer management (e-FMS) system. The funds from centralised MGNREGS account maintained at the nodal banks will be electronically transferred to the respective accounts of the individual workers through ?NREGA soft?, which is the software developed by National Informatics Centre,? the official added.
The state was able to generate 33 crore mandays as against the target of 30 crore during 2011-12. It had achieved 84% target of the Labour Budget being able to disburse R3,000 crore as against the approved R3,572 crore in the last financial year.