09/12/2020
Delayed payments to rejection: MGNREGS workers spend money to collect wages | Business Standard News
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Workers in India’s rural jobs programme, the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), faced
numerous delays and hurdles in accessing their wages, a threestate survey by transparency project LibTech India has found.
Delayed payments had become so normal for workers that they
did not see month-long delays to be a violation of their rights
under the scheme, the survey noted.
MGNREGS workers’ perspectives on the nature of hardships faced
in accessing wages, awareness of banking norms, access to
information, grievance redressal under the scheme, transparency
and accountability were captured in the ‘Length of the Last Mile’
survey of 1,947 workers in one block each of Andhra Pradesh and
Rajasthan and two blocks of Jharkhand between September and
November 2018. The report based on the survey was released on
November 18, 2020.
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Respondents had to make multiple visits to and wait for long hours at di erent disbursement agencies,
spending between Rs 6 and Rs 67 on travel for each visit, said the survey. The multiple trips and long
waits imply that workers had to forego further earnings in order to collect their MGNREGS dues.
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Nearly 13% of surveyed workers reported rejected payments and most were unaware of the reason for
rejection, meaning future wage payments to these individuals would continue to be rejected, according
to the survey report. Yet only about 6.3% of workers whose payments were rejected registered a written
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