Ministries fight over job scheme wages

The rural development ministry has come in direct conflict with the communications ministry, which has refused to accept its request for disbursing wages under the rural job scheme through post offices without charging any fee.

The rural development ministry was unwilling to pay any fee for the service, Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said.

The rural development ministry wants to disburse all wages under the scheme through post offices and banks, but is having a tough time persuading the postal authorities.

Singh had, a few months ago, told states that the implementing agency and the wage-disbursement agency should not be related. This was meant to correct the anomalies noticed during the scheme's first year of operation.

In Andhra Pradesh, all the beneficiaries""around 20 lakh households""get their wages through post offices. In this case, the postal department's fee of 2 per of the wages was being paid by the state government as of now, the minister said.

"In Birbhum district of West Bengal, Speaker Somnath Chatterjee's recommendation helped the ministry get a waiver," said Singh.

"We want post offices to disburse wages in all the areas which do not have access to a bank, but without charging any fee," Singh said. He has written to Communications Minister A Raja and the two are expected to meet soon to thrash out the matter.

Singh, in his letter, said opening accounts and making payments was normal activity for the postal department. According to the rural development ministry officials, the postal authorities have said that they do not have enough manpower to handle the two crore accounts under the scheme.

The postal department has put forward several models of payment to the rural development ministry.