LM: Govt decides to make rural jobs scheme women-friendly: January 10, 2011

REFORM MEASURES
Govt decides to make rural jobs scheme women-friendly…..RUHI TEWARI

The government has decided to make its marquee rural jobs scheme more women- friendly while linking wages paid under it to inflation, as suggested by a group of ex- perts, but it has declined to bring the wages in line with the minimum prescribed in the Constitution.
The rural development min- istry had formed some working groups to look into the imple- mentation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Em- ployment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and suggest re- forms.

MGNREGS promises 100 days of manual work annually to at least one member of every rural household. The scheme has been allocated `40,100 crore this fiscal, and currently provides employment to 39 million households.

We received the recom- mendations from the working groups sometime in mid-No- vember, and then, after scruti- nizing and analysing them,we gave our inputs last month and then decided to make the in- formation public, said a se- nior ministry official, asking not to be named.

Many of the recommenda- tions are now being worked into different policies, the of- ficial added.

Six working groups–on planning and execution, wag- es, transparency and account- ability, capacity building, spe- cific needs of specific catego- ries of workers, and work to be taken up on individual land– were created under the Central Employment Guarantee Coun- cil, the watchdog for MGN- REGS.

Their recommendations, as well as the ministry’s views, are available on the MGNREGS website.

The working group on spe- cific needs of special groups recommended appointing ex- clusive staff at district/block levels to mobilize and look af- ter the needs of persons with disabilities, correcting the gender bias in the labour market by providing women- friendly tools and tasks such as collection of non-timber forest produce, and providing more assistance to tribals.

The ministry has agreed to most of these suggestions and has advised states to consider implementing them within the 6% administrative expenses limit.

The group on planning and execution recommended pro- moting skill development among MGNREGS workers and graduating them to semiskilled and skilled work. But the ministry said as MGNREGS is meant specifically for un- skilled manual workers, such a suggestion can only be consid- ered in conjunction with other schemes such as the National Rural Livelihood Mission.

The group on capacity build- T ing asked the government to link salaries paid to employees who implement MGNREGS to the performance of the scheme. However, the ministry said this is not feasible as MGNREGS is a demand-driven scheme–work is provided only on demand from potential beneficiaries.

We have not accepted this particular suggestion because we cannot incentivize getting labour under the scheme, since it is demand-driven, the ministry official said.

The working group on wages demanded that MGNREGS wages be linked to inflation as well as the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.

The ministry agreed to link the wages to inflation, and did so through a notification on Thursday.

But Annie Raja, a social ac- tivist and a member of the working group on wages, said this is hardly enough.

The ministry has sent its views on our recommenda- tions to chairpersons of the working groups, and we con- demn the approach of the min- istry, Raja said. The govern- ment is trying to finish the scheme… Basic issues related r to implementation of the scheme, like effective griev- s ance redressal mechanisms, etc., are not in place… And the government is also refusing to – bring MGNREGS wages in line t with the minimum wages un- der the Act of 1948, which we – have demanded.