Jharkhand State Congress Committee has criticised the Governments both at the Centre as well as in the State for lower wages under the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGA. The party while comparing the wages in other States also referred to the scheme as the lifeline of the poor and marginalised sections.
“Social, economic and caste census done in 2011 has said that over 50 per cent of the rural families are employed in unskilled jobs and are dependent on that for their livelihood. As per the survey 2015-16, annual unemployment rate was 7.7 per cent in the State whereas it was 5.5 for the rest of the country. In the scenario like this, MGNREGA is the only lifeline for the rural households. But it is baffling to note that MGNREGA wage which is Rs 168 is Rs 62 lesser than even minimum wages fixed in the State,” said JPCC spokesperson Rajesh Thakur addressing a press conference on Friday.
He also went on quoting a Supreme Court order which states that forcing anyone to work below the minimum wage is akin to bounded labour and rapped the State Government as well as the Center for not revising the wages. Thakur showed dismal revisions made for the last three years in MGNREGA wage.
“We have seen a drastic decline in participation of dalits and tribals into the rural job scheme due to all this. Also the percentage of persons getting 100 days of job in a year has come down from 6 per cent to 2 per cent. There is no doubt that treatment like this has contributed into series of hunger deaths and poor human development indices of the State,” added the spokesperson.
The party also expressed worry over overuse of Aadhaar identification, especially in MGNREGA and claimed that this has led to cancelation of numerous job cards along with holding payments. “Wages worth over Rs 11 crore belonging to about one lakh labourers have been rejected due to Aadhaar this year itself. As much as 81 per cent of the compensation for delayed wage is pending since 2014-15 to till now,” said Thakur.