As nearly two-thirds of the `73,000 crore budgetary allocation for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) has already been used up in the first four months of the current fiscal, an activists’ group has demanded immediate allocation of additional funds under the scheme that provides livelihood security to rural households.
Taking into actual expenditure till July 21 of the current fiscal and pending payments of the current and previous fiscals, a total of `48,502 crore or 66.44% of the allocated fund has already been spent under the scheme, People’s Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) has found.
“The provisioning (for the current fiscal) has been significantly less than required, despite soaring demand for employment in recent years,” PAEG said.
MG-NREGS is a demand-driven wage employment programme which provides livelihood security of rural households by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
It provides fall back options for livelihood, when no better employment opportunity is available.