Unemployment allowance for the landless workers, the second leg of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Nregs), is not working because states don?t have the money to finance it.
Nregs data show that barring a few, most of the state governments have not been able to provide this social security measure to the rural workers. States such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, with a large demand base, have not paid unemployment dues for more than 1.96 lakh and 2.15 lakh person days, respectively, during the current financial year.
The Nregs guarantees 100 days of manual work to each rural household per annum. If they don?t get work, they become eligible for unemployment allowance within 15 days of demanding work.
The situation affects better-off state governments too. Tamil Nadu has huge unemployment allowance dues of more than 3.2 lakh persons days. Even Maharashtra has unemployment allowance dues of 67,231 persons days, while Gujarat has not paid the allowance to workers for 21,396 days.
The Nregs puts the onus of paying unemployment allowance to the workers with the state governments.
?We have been repeatedly informing state governments about the payment of unemployment allowance, but without much success,? BK Sinha, Secretary, ministry of rural development, told FE.
Orissa has not paid 50,727 person days worth of unemployment allowance to workers during 2011-12. The government has allocated R40,000 crore for implementation of Nregs in the current financial year.
Under Nregs, the central government provides 90% total expenditure, while the state government decides the stipulated amount of unemployment allowance which should not be less than one-fourth of the minimum wage for the first 30 days and not less than one-half of the minimum wage thereafter.
Meanwhile, the initiative to provide unemployment allowances as a social security measure has not got support from the labour ministry.
Recently, labour minister Mallikarjun Kharge told Parliament that the labour ministry was not in favour of providing any such benefits to the unemployed.
When contacted, a senior labour ministry official said: ?We are in favour of creating employment, not in unemployment allowances.?
During 2010-11, works under Nregs was provided to 5.49 crore households and 257.15 crore person days generated. This is against 5.26 crore households provided employment and 283.59 crore person days of works generated.
?The major reason cited by the state governments for the decline in person days is good monsoon rains, higher wage rate in the open market and other employment opportunities available,? said Jairam Ramesh, rural development minister, in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.