Chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy has said that more works had to be included to widen the scope of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
These include unskilled labour charges in housing activities under the rural housing programme, clearing of debris and cleaning of village drains under the village, vegetable cultivation and sericulture programmes in SC/ST lands and unskilled wages in construction of biogas plants and providing 150 days wage employment to vulnerable sections of the population such as the SC/ST households.
These issues were taken up with Union minister of rural development, Jairam Ramesh, during his visit to Hyderabad on Saturday. “Under the MGNREGS, over 12 million ration cards have been issued in 22 districts covering 1,098 mandals. Besides, 18.3 million individuals in 91,33,801 households have been provided wage employment of 69,002 habitations of 21,860 grampanchayats,” Reddy said.
Stating that one of the major reasons for the success of the scheme in AP was due to the social audit being conducted through a well-organised network of non-government organisations, Reddy said use of information technology for logistics such as electronic fund management, electronic muster and measurement had yielded results. A 24x7 call centre has been operationalised so as to enable the people to register complaints.