Chandigarh April 24:
Punjab Government has been criticized by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in a report on the poor implementation of Plan Mahatma National Rural Employment Guarantee Gandhi (MGNREGS), presented in Parliament.
Punjab is one of the seven states that have not developed guidelines for the implementation of the provisions of the Employment Guarantee Act, NREGA despite being in force for seven years. The report noted that the poorest of the poor in the state were not able to fully exercise their rights under the employment guarantee scheme and several irregularities were observed in the work and procedures. Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh have also developed guidelines for the plan, he said.
Despite the failure of the regime near the cash-strapped state was used as a stick by Congress to overcome opposition to the government during the budget session of the Vidhan Sabha last month, this is the first time that the Punjab has called a laggard in the national level, the sources said. The damning report comes at a time when the state is witnessing widespread agitation by the workers who work under the employment guarantee scheme being denied wages. On March 16, an effigy of Punjab, the government and officials NREGA NREGA was burned by Megha Rai association in Uttar village in Ferozepur district Guruharsahai block, to register their protest.
Since then, the effigies of government have been burned across the state to protest the government's failure in this regard, with the last protest held in Mohali last week. Piara Singh AIYF leader block and NREGA union Megha Raj Kumar bloc leader Bahadur said that workers hired under the scheme have not been paid salaries for the past two years. Leader of the Opposition in Vidhan Sabha, Sunil Jakhar, who protested in the state assembly against the government's failure, said the Alliance government had not developed any mechanism to monitor flagship schemes launched by the central government for the welfare of the economically poor.
"The CAG report suspected that funds received under MNREGA could have been misutilised by officials in the purchase of laptops for personal or official repair their homes," said Jakhar. By his own admission, the state government admitted in the last Economic Survey, tabled during the budget session, only 43.34% of the total funds raised were used to the regime. The central government launched 10829.36 lakh, while the state government released only Rs 873 lakh under the scheme for the year 2011-12, according to the Economic Survey.