Civil society organisations today demanded immediate release of funds for MGNREGA for the remaining two months of the current fiscal so that beneficiaries get work and are paid their wages on time.
As MGNREGA celebrates 10 years, civil society groups under the banner of People's Action for Employment Guarantee (PAEG) also said they want to remind the finance minister that he had promised to release Rs 5,000 crore for MGNREGA in his budget speech last year.
Only Rs 2,000 crore of that amount has been released while 14 states are struggling with a negative balance, they claimed.
"This inability to provide the money required as per work demand is not only a blatant violation of the law (but also) automatically undermines its basic principle, that of being an employment guarantee," said Nikhil Dey, activist and a member of PAEG.
Social activist Aruna Roy said for her part that there are multiple requests from state governments for additional funds to meet the current and anticipated demand from workers.
In fact, even Rs 3,000 crore would not be enough to meet the current demand, she averred.
"The chilling effect... Through fund starvation has been documented repeatedly. At this time, it is clear that the MGNREGA cannot even afford temporary shortages. The MGNREGA has only just begun to recover from four years of fund starvation, culminating in a disastrous year in 2014-15.
"This is by no means an unreasonable demand. If budgetary allocations in UPA-II and the NDA had only kept pace with real expenditure levels from 2010, the whole programme would have had a real opportunity to expand in scope, reach, and effect," she said.
