Minister for Finance and Health T. Harish Rao on Saturday addressed a postcard to the Centre with a request to link the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MG-NREGS) to agricultural operations to bring down the costs of farming and to provide some relief to the farming community.
He penned the postcard as part of campaign initiated by Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA from Narsampet Peddi Sudershan Reddy. The Minister asked the Centre to increase wage-days in the scheme and stop measures to weaken the objective of the scheme by imposing cuts in the budgetary allocation for the scheme for the last two years. He stated that the Centre had cut the allocation to the wage employment scheme by a whopping ₹55,000 crore in two years.
Speaking on the occasion, he said against the provision in the act to ensure at least ₹257 wages to every wage-seeker for a day’s work those engaged in the wage works executed under the scheme were not even getting ₹100 a day in most of the cases. Besides, the Centre was also not providing basic facilities and such as tent for shade and drinking water and tools as as shovel, spade, baskets to shift the gravel/soil and others.
The Minister stated that the Minimum Wages Act mandates wages of at least ₹480 for 8 hours of work by a person but the wage seekers were getting only paltry wages. The wage seekers were also facing several technical problems such as connectivity to register their presence in the work spot at 10 am and 4 pm.
Stating that Telangana small and marginal farmers comprise a lion’s share in the landholding farmers and that they would also seek wage work during the off-farm seasons, Mr. Harish Rao said linking NREGS with agricultural operations would also provide huge relief in the matter of farming costs for such farmers. He suggested that 100 wage days be allotted to every acre of land per year to make the scheme productive too.
He also sought job security to the Assistant Programme Officers and Field Assistants engaged in the scheme. The postcard campaign was launched on April 8 at Duggondi in Narsampet constituency.
Leave Comments