NREGA workers face payments delay in Andhra

Bakkanna is a daily wage labourer whose only source of family bread is the payment he gets after a day of hard labour.

With National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) works taken up in his village Alampur in Mahbubnagar district last year, he took the oppurtunity to earn some money within the village, instead of migrating to nearby towns for work.

But the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, meant to provide livelihood for the rural poor, proved to be of no rescue to his family as Bakkanna says that he did not receive the payment for the work he and his wife have done under NREGA more than a month ago.

"I was not paid for work I had done for 10 days, done in the village almost two months back," Bakkanna said.

According to the NREGA guidelines, payments for the work should be made within 14 days of the completion of the work.

The lack of payment on time seems to a phenomenon not restricted to individual cases alone. It appears to be the case for thousands of rural poor in Andhra Pradesh who resorted to NREGA for their daily bread.

Andhra Pradesh has chosen post offices to disburse wages under the NREGA. Post offices are considered the most efficient way to disburse wages , still there is delay in the payments.

While agreeing that disbursal through post offices is simple and transparent than the method followed under schemes like Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) which was through the Panchayats, villagers in several parts of the State complained that their wages are never paid on time.

"We are getting the wages paid at the post office in the adjacent village through our respective accounts. Though we are getting the proper amount of Rs 80 per day's work, we receive the payment after 15 days," Soubhagyamma a resident of Dantanuru in Kothakota mandal of Mahbubnagar district said.

Even the NREGA officials in the state admit that there is a delay in the payment of wages through post offices.

"There are several reasons for this delay. Sometimes the field assistant may not be able to close the musters on time. Inspections by the technical staff may take some more time and added to that is computerisation of the records. In some cases the Mandal officers are not available to sign the musters etc," A Murali, Director NREGA, Andhra Pradesh government told Business Standard.

The problems specific to post offices is that they have some limits like a village post master has to get the cheque amount approved from the mandal officials and after that also he cannot carry more than Rs 10,000 at a time.

For this reason he has to visit the main Branch in the area several times, he explained.

In Puttandoddi village in Itikyal mandal of Mahbubnagar, the last payrolls at the post office in the village showed that the payment was not made for the works done from May 15 onwards.

When questioned the post master said that they had just received the payrolls and would be able to pay the amounts within a day or two.

A different situation is arising with the village authorities taking up NREGA works without necessary approvals.

The post master explained, "The problem with those works is that they were done without prior approvals and were not in accordance with NREGA guidelines. So the payment was held back."

In the neighbouring Kurnool district, covered under the second phase of NREGA, villages are planning to dispose the wages through the post offices only.

"Once the works are taken up and completed, we are planning to pay the wages through the post office here," Anuradhamma, president, B Tandrapadu village of Kurnool mandal said.