There has been growing discontentment amongst the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) workers as payments for their work has not been forthcoming for months in many states.

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As of February 28 2018, payments worth Rs 9,573 crore is due on material and labour employed, according to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) portal.

A large quantum, Rs 7474 crore, is on account of pending payments for construction material used for works under NREGA scheme such as cattle shed or toilet construction.

However, state-level situations differ. States like Andhra Pradesh has Rs 1,720 crore pending payments, West Bengal has Rs 1,425 crore pending, Karnataka still has to pay Rs 1,110 crore to its NREGA workers, while Bihar is staring at a pending list of Rs 900 crore. These states have the highest quantum of payments pending by the government.

Inadequate fund allocations for the scheme and transfers from the centre has been a critical aspect. The Budget 2019 allocated Rs 55,000 crore for the scheme, but at that time nearly Rs 10,000 crore was already pending to be paid and hence the actual outlay available for spending in fiscal 2019 was only Rs 45,000 crore.

An additional sanction of Rs 6,084 crore was made in January 2019. However, Rs 5,745 crore of this has been spent paying pending dues. So now, practically negligible funds are available to fulfil new demands of January-March 2019.

Data shows that in many states Fund Transfer Orders (FTOs) have not been processed post-October 2018. On a national level, the percentage of pendency in processing FTOs is quite poor.

Up to 88 percent of all NREGA FTOs in February 2019 have not been processed. Also, 47 percent of all FTOs in January 2019, 30 percent for December 2018 and 21 percent of all FTOs in November 2018 are pending for processing.

This is a clear deviation from the NREGA Act that promises that wages will be given within 15 days of doing work. In some states even if the FTOs have been processed by the central government, it is getting stuck at the bank level. Hence, there are some discrepancies in state-level data.

As funds dried up, we understand from ground level sources that the system has stopped accepting any more fund transfer orders. So the payment dues are adding up but not reflecting.

While the government has increased the outlay to Rs 60,000 crore in the interim budget 2019-20, it may not be enough again. Well, the delays from the centre’s end have been highlighted in the past as well.

First Published:Mar 1, 2019 10:23 PM IST