New Delhi: The ministry of rural development is planning to train at least 10,000 youths in basic civil engineering concepts and engage them in the planning and supervision of works carried out under the ministry’s flagship welfare programme—the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), according to ministry officials who did not want to be named.

In a separate move, the ministry has also ordered a review of payment transfers to workers registered with the rural jobs programme after complaints of delayed payments, said one of the officials cited above.

The move to train youths is aimed at ensuring the quality of assets created under the scheme and also providing an extra avenue of employment for the economically and socially marginalized.

Those chosen will be trained using modules prepared by the ministry along with the International Labour Organization (ILO).

An ideal candidate will be a higher secondary pass youth whose household is registered under the scheme, said Aparajita Sarangi, joint secretary at the ministry.

Through the scheme, the ministry aims to ensure that the assets created under MGNREGS lasts at least a decade, the ministry officials said.

Water conservation and water harvesting projects, drought proofing, afforestation, tree plantation, the construction of irrigation canals, renovation of traditional water bodies including desilting of tanks, creation of bunds for flood control and rural connectivity are some of the works carried out under the job guarantee scheme.

The ministry estimates that India currently needs 150,000 such technicians to maintain assets created under the MGNREGS across the country.

“Creation of assets is the easy part, maintenance is difficult. We want sustainable assets to be created," said Sarangi. “We try to create 900,000 assets every year under MGNREGS. But the criticism we are facing under MGNREGS is that these assets are not sustainable and the assets created are not of good quality. There was this critical gap and the ILO partnered with us to come up with the training manuals."

MGNREGS is aimed at ensuring 100 days of employment in a financial year to adult members of a rural household who volunteer to perform unskilled manual work.

The rural employment programme was notified on 7 September 2005, and came into effect on 2 February 2006. It seeks to create “durable assets" such as roads and irrigation facilities.

But analysts say the programme has suffered from neglect for the past several years, with the budget remaining stagnant in the face of rising costs, eroding the programme’s ability to act as a cushion against rural distress and create a pool of sustainable assets.

Another problem the programme faces is delayed payments to workers despite measures such as cash transfers into the bank or post office accounts of workers.

One of the rural development ministry officials cited earlier said the ministry has received complaints of corruption and pilfering of funds even after an electronic funds management system and biometric authentication of workers were put in place for disbursal of payments. “Only 28% of the payments were made on time to workers during 2014-15," said the official.

A dimension of MGNREGS that needs attention is the payment of wages on time, rural development secretary J.K. Mohapatra said at an event on 6 October.

The ministry has also received complaints about a large number of incomplete projects under MGNREGS and a lack of awareness among many households about their entitlements.

The ministry has decided to send teams to all states to review the situation, according to one of the ministry officials cited earlier.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Share Via