The wages have been pending for nearly two years after the BJP government at the Centre stopped paying the state’s share of funds for the rural employment guarantee scheme, citing corruption in its implementation.
Last Saturday, Chief Minister Banerjee, who has been pressuring the Centre to clear the state’s pending funds, announced that the state government will pay 21 lakh MGNREGA workers their pending wages by February 21. The dues will be transferred to their bank accounts.
According to sources in the state government, senior officials in a meeting with district administrations recently directed them to eliminate fake job cards by carrying out “house-to-house verification to authenticate genuine MGNREGA workers”.
“All the draft wage payment lists generated from the unpaid FTOs (Fund Transfer Order) have to be sent to gram panchayats for house-to-house verification in order to authenticate genuine workers, eliminate duplication and mapping proper bank account against each of the workers,” the directive issued to the district administration stated.
“For this, the BDOs will constitute a suitable number of teams for each of the gram panchayats under their jurisdiction depending upon the number of workers for whom details need to be verified. Each team will consist of two or more members, out of which one should be a gram panchayat official (Executive Assistant /Nirman Sahayak /Secretary /Sahayak) or other government employee and other member(s) of the team should be from among Gram Rozgar Sahayak (GRS), Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE), Village Resource Person (VRP) of Social Audit or Awas Bandhu,” the order stated.
To prevent tampering with the data, the directive said that the Draft Wage Payment Lists in Excel format will be password protected and the Gram Panchayats will be told to take printouts of the list that will be given to the teams constituted for conducting house-to-house verification.
“During verification of wage payment lists, if the genuineness of any worker is not established and substantial doubt arises, the team will make appropriate remarks and will not recommend payment in favour of that worker,” the order said.
The state government’s directive comes amid the probe by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), a central agency, into the alleged embezzlement of MGNREGA funds in the state. On Tuesday, the central probe agency carried out searches at the residences of officials and a businessman in four districts. The ED initiated the probe based on five FIRs lodged at several police stations in the state, including two in Murshidabad’s Beldanga police station and one in Hooghly’s Dhanekhali police station. According to ED sources, their investigation has found embezzlement of Central funds in the state with 100 days of work being reduced to nine on the ground and issuance of fake job cards to siphon money.
A senior officer of the state administration said that in last month’s meeting in Delhi over the pending funds of the state, the Central government had asked the West Bengal government to submit a detailed report of fake and deleted job cards. “This issue (of fake jobs cards) was raised in the meeting and Central officials told us to submit a report. Now, after this directive, we will get the report from the district administration and submit it to the Centre,” the senior officer said.
According to the West Bengal government, Rs 6,900 crore is due to the state under MGNREGA.