Large-scale pending NREGA payments in April-May 2017

JAIPUR: Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) for NREGA wage payments worth Rs 3,045 crore are yet to be processed by the National Electronic Fund Management System (NEFMS) of the Central government. The situation has worsened considerably over the past two months as 63% of FTOs pending for processing were generated in April-May.

Processing of FTOs has come to a virtual halt over the past few days. The situation is worst for Kerala and Uttarakhand; no FTO generated in either of these two states has been processed since April 15 this year. This is not the first time such a problem has arisen; almost no FTO was processed for about 20 days in March–April 2017 as well. The reasons for this gross irregularity are unclear. The

Ministry of Rural Development

has offered no explanation.

While delay in wage payments should be calculated from the 16th day of completion of the work week till the day on which the workers actually receive their wages – as NREGApayments are done in fortnightly cycles – the NREGA Management Information System (MIS) has been programmed to calculate compensation in a flawed manner. Delay is calculated only till the ‘payment date’, instead of the date when the wages are actually credited to the workers’ accounts.

The payment date is when the second signature is made to approve the FTO. It often takes several days before the payment reaches the worker even after the FTO is signed, as in the ongoing irregularity of FTOs not getting processed by the NEFMS. This flaw results in a gap that stretches to many months on a number of occasions. This goes completely unaccounted.

Secretary

Amarjeet Sinha

of the Union rural development ministry was busy in a meeting and unavailable for comments. The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, a recently formed platform for raising issues in the implementation of the employment guarantee act, has raised the following demands:

• The government must adopt a system for NREGA wage payments that is reliable and not vulnerable to gross irregularities such as repeated delays in processing of FTOs.
• The government must immediately inform states about irregularities such as non-processing of FTOs and also make this information available on the official NREGAwebsite.
• Workers must be compensated for the full extent of delays i.e. till the wages are credited in their account.