Rs 60cr doled out for relief to gram rozgar sewaks

Lucknow: To address the starvation like situation among more than 45,000 gram rozgar sewaks, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday announced a special relief of Rs 60 crore for them from state funds.
Rozgar sewaks had been recruited on a large scale for the MNREGA programme and were getting remuneration from government of India which stopped releasing funds for them over a year ago.Each one of them was getting Rs 3,500 a month as wages but it was withheld.
The decision to provide relief was taken after rural development minister Arvind Singh Gope had a meeting with the chief minister on Tuesday at his residence and pursuaded him to intervene and save thousands of gram rozgar sewaks.
The rural workers had been employed by various village panchayats under the MNREGA programme in different parts of the state, but since funds from MNREGA have almost stopped coming from the Centre, the village workers are on the verge of starvation.
The agitated workers had protested before then UPA government and represented their case before the Union ministers of the state, but they were disappointed to see that the Central government was winding up the world’s large employment guarantee scheme.
“It is a good decision taken by the chief minister to save lives of thousands of gram rozgar sewaks. But the decision should have come much earlier,” said Sanjay Dixit ex- member of the Central MNREGA council.