Karam Prakash

Tribune News Service

Patiala, June 6

Many workers are first enrolled without being informed and thereafter marked absent in the muster roll — the attendance register at the site — under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme.

New plan in place

We have developed a new mechanism wherein information will be sent to the workers’ mobile numbers. - Dr Preeti Yadav, Additional Deputy Commissioner

Consequently, workers face a double whammy of not getting work under MGNREGA and then being deprived of the unemployment allowance too. Notably, if a beneficiary is marked absent in the muster roll for a week after allotment of work, he can’t claim the unemployment allowance.

It is learnt that officials of the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat on purpose don’t inform MGNREGA workers so as to make them stay absent and lose their right to unemployment allowance.

In one such instance, Kiranjeet Kaur of Dharoki village in Nabha town was not informed about her allotment letter of work by officials. However, the officials claimed they had issued a letter to her and had conveyed it to their leader. Ironically, the letter of work allotment, accessed by The Tribune, was issued on May 20 to Kiranjeet Kaur, but she was enrolled for the work which had already begun on May 19. The enrolment letter was handed over on Monday after The Tribune raised the issue. The officials said they would ensure that workers got 100 days of employment as guaranteed under the Act.

It is learnt that the unemployment allowance has to be provided by the erring officials from their own pocket. That provision, said a source, prompts officials to use this modus operandi of first enrolling the workers without informing them and then marking them absent.