Tripura tops for sixth year in providing rural jobs

Agartala, April 17: The Left-ruled Tripura maintained its top position for the sixth consecutive year by providing 88 person-days’ rural jobs per household under the job guarantee scheme during the 2014-15 fiscal, a cabinet minister said here on Friday.

“Tripura has been providing the highest average employment for the past six years under the MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi tiol Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme),” Tripura Rural Development Minister resh Jamatia told reporters here.

He said: “Tripura provided 88 days of work per household in the just concluded fincial year (2014-15) against the tiol average of 40 person-days.”

“Tripura has maintained the top position in providing rural jobs since 2009-10,” the minister said, citing from the status report of the union rural development ministry.

According to the report, Maharashtra came second with 53 person-days per household, followed by Andhra Pradesh with 47 person-days, Rajasthan with 45.71 and Meghalaya with 46.42 person-days.

The tiol Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) mandates 100 days of employment in a fincial year to at least one member of each rural household in the state.

According to the central government performance report on the MGNREGS, of the total of 249,542 panchayats across the country, 33,670 panchayats did not provide any job to any worker. These 33,670 panchayats are mostly in Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat, Harya, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.

The minister said the central government at a very short notice from April 1 introduced the Public Fincial Magement System (PFMS) to make the monetary system — from fund allocation by the union and state governments to payment to labourers revoking the previous e-FMS (Electronic Fund Magement System). “Though both the systems are transparent, hassle and error-free and paperless besides elimiting administrative delays and we support the new system too, the PFMS was introduced in less than a week’s notice, creating problems in some blocks to disburse the wage payments to the workers,” Jamatia added.

Tripura is providing wages to the MGNREGS workers at their doorstep through business correspondents engaged by various tiolised and regiol rural banks, he said.

Besides providing rural jobs, the MGNREGS has created rural assets that include household latrines, drinking water sources, rural road connectivity, livestock promotion, pisciculture, watershed magement and afforestation, securing livelihood activities. (IANS)