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NREGA gaining pace in Karaikal

PUDUCHERRY: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has gained momentum in Karaikal region with as many as 14,800 people belonging to 12,007 families getting benefited so far. The Act guarantees at least 100 days’ employment every financial year to all households, whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. Karaikal Collector Vasanth Kumar told The Hindu that after the Union government extended the programme to 130 more districts, work was taken up in 27 villages in the Kariakal region on June 9. Of the 19, 800 families that had applied for job cards to join the scheme, cards were issued to 17, 000 families, he said.

They were given jobs to de-silt 310 irrigation channels meant to carry Cauvery water to agricultural fields and irrigation tanks. “All the channels are now de-silted and are ready for use,” he said. A sum of Rs. 1.28 crore had been released to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries as wage, Mr. Kumar said.

Once the second instalment of the funds under the Act is released, work would be again assigned to the card-holders, he said, adding that they planned to take up works such as de-silting of ponds, rainwater harvesting and road maintenance in the second phase of the programme.

Project Director of District Rural Development Agency, which is the nodal agency for NREGA, Mathew Samuel, said that they had sought an additional sum of around Rs. 4 crore for taking up works in the Karaikal region. As regards the progress made in the implementation of the scheme in the Puducherry region, he said the enormous task in opening bank accounts for a large number of beneficiaries was causing delay in the execution of the project.

Mr. Samuel said more than 50,000 families had applied for job cards and the banks were finding it difficult to cope with the numbers. Only around 12,000 families out of the entire number had bank accounts at present and others were yet to open it, he said. As per the NREGA guidelines, the beneficiaries should be given payment only through banks to make the entire process transparent, he said. The scheme would be implemented in Puducherry once the banks complete the process, he added. “We will soon start issuing the job cards to the beneficiaries in the Puducherry region,” he said.

Mr. Samuel said the government was keen on implementing the scheme in all 98 village panchayats in the Puducherry and Kariakal regions. The DRDA had completed the sensitisation programme for village panchayat heads and staff of the Local Administration Department for effective implementation of the scheme, he said.

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