— By FPJ Bureau | Feb 03, 2016 12:09 am
NEW DELHI : The Congress on Tuesday asked the government not to make a farce of discovering virtues in the UPA”s flagship programmes like MGNREGA and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) using Aadhaar after slamming them as ‘living monuments of the 60 years of Congress misdeeds.’
Why take false credit of pushing MGNREGA to hilt in the drought hit states when you could provide jobs to only 86.75 lakh people in these states as against 1.95 crore families asking for jobs
Randeep Singh Surjewala
Why take false credit of pushing MGNREGA to a hilt in the drought hit states when you could provide jobs to only 86.75 lakh people in these states as against 1.95 crore families asking for jobs, Congress chief spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala asked.
In a lengthy statement, he demolished the pious claims made by the government at the celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the MGNREGA at the Vigyan Bhawan here.
The number of families getting 100 days of compulsory employment in a year has been systematically brought down to half, he said, pointing out that 52.73 lakh families got it in 2012-13 and 46.59 lakh in 2013-14, but their number has been drastically cut down to 24.94 lakh in 2014-15 and a dismal 20.45 lakh in this drought year of 2015-16.
Surjewala said the truth is that instead of a 100-day guaranteed work, only an average 39.98 days of employment is being made available to workers and that too with payment of wages never on time.
The gap between the workdays and wages is continuously increasing, he said, pointing out that the unpaid wages in the current fiscal amount to more than Rs 11,000 crore.
He said funds with the states have dried up and 14 states, including Andhra Pradesh, are showing negative balance because the Centre is not loosening strings of its purse.