Delayed payments to rejection: MGNREGS workers spend money to collect wages

Nearly 13% of surveyed workers reported rejected payments and most were unaware of the reason for rejection

Workers in India’s rural jobs programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), faced numerous delays and hurdles in accessing their wages, a three-state survey by transparency project LibTech India has found. Delayed payments had become so normal for workers that they did not see month-long delays to be a violation of their rights under the scheme, the survey noted.

MGNREGS workers’ perspectives on the nature of hardships faced in accessing wages, awareness of banking norms, access to information, grievance redressal under the scheme, transparency and accountability were captured in the ‘Length of the Last Mile’ survey of 1,947