09/12/2020
Delayed payments to rejection: MGNREGS workers spend money to collect wages | Business Standard News
complaint, of which nearly 60% said their complaint was not resolved satisfactorily, or at all. A robust
grievance redress system could x this, experts told IndiaSpend.
The 15-year-old MGNREGS scheme, which guarantees 100 days of unskilled work a year to every rural
household, has about 140 million active workers. In a year of heightened rural distress, with abrupt job
losses in the informal sector stemming from the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown, MGNREGS is falling
short in helping residents tide over the economic distress, IndiaSpend had reported in August. Around
4.2 million rejected wage transactions in the current nancial year remain pending for resolution.
Multiple visits and costs incurred over ‘the last mile’ to payment
Four types of MGNREGS wages disbursement agencies, i.e. banks, customer service points (CSPs; kiosks
where customers access limited banking services), business correspondents (BCs; who travel with pointof-sale machines for small banking transactions) and ATMs were used by respondents. CSPs and BCs
both require customers to authenticate transactions through Aadhaar-based biometrics. In Andhra
Pradesh, workers could also withdraw wages from post o ces.
Almost half of the respondents had to visit each type of disbursement agency multiple times to receive
wages. Two in ve workers had to make multiple visits to CSPs or BCs, which accounted for the least
number of visits; 45% had to make multiple visits to banks. Making withdrawals from ATMs were the
most bothersome, with more than half (55.3%) of respondents having to make multiple visits due to
insu cient cash in ATM machines.
More than half of Andhra Pradesh respondents had to make multiple visits to any of the disbursement
agencies, the most among all three states, with nearly three in four having to revisit CSPs or BCs for
assistance due to biometric failure.
With each failure leading to increased visits, costs of accessing wages rose. The cost of travel to and
from agencies was Rs 6 to the post o ce (in Andhra Pradesh), Rs 31 to visit a bank, Rs 11 to a CSP/BC
and Rs 67 to an ATM, on average.
Similar issues of access for workers were noted in a February 2020 report by the Karnataka Evaluation
Authority (KEA), when evaluating the impact of wage and material payments to MGNREGS bene ciaries
through the electronic fund management system for ve years to 2018-19 in eight districts. Problems of
access increase the cost of transactions for workers, the KEA report had noted. “To add to the hardship
the workers would often take the trouble to go by foot, or a vehicle to a kiosk only to nd that ‘the [ATM]
machine is out of order,’ ‘no cash available,’ ‘no electricity or power supply’, or that wage has not been
credited,” said the KEA report.
“With postal payment banks, one can think of the bene ts of accessibility of post o ces for workers,”
Sakina Dhorajiwala, co-author of the LibTech India survey report, told IndiaSpend. But there were many
cases of post o ces in Andhra Pradesh hoarding the money for disbursal for long periods, she said.
While the cost incurred by workers to access wages from post o ces seems to have been low, despite
the multiple visits required, this mode also requires biometric authentication which posed the same
problems of biometric failure as with the CSP model, Dhorajiwala added.
Long hours at various wage disbursement agencies
Among the 1,204 workers of the 1,947 surveyed who are bank users, it took more than four hours to
access wages for about 42% of workers in Jharkhand and 38% in Rajasthan. This was signi cantly less in
Andhra Pradesh, at just 2% of workers. Further, it took more than ve hours to access wages from banks
for 30% of workers in Jharkhand.
Banks are usually located at the block headquarters and thus tend to be crowded, the survey noted.
Despite the long hours taken, around 80% of bank users surveyed preferred banks as these were felt to
be more secure, coupled with o ering the full range of banking services, such as updation of passbooks.
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Less time was taken for transactions at CSPs or BCs, and there was less crowding than at banks, the
survey found. However, most workers still had to wait for at least an hour at CSPs and BCs. In Andhra
Pradesh, 50% of CSP and BC users took more than an hour to access wages, while those in Jharkhand
and Rajasthan took more than two hours to access wages. The experience was worse for around 30% of
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