NREGA work for the really needy in our area of Gajapati district

Dear All;

I am sending you all the following note reflecting our continuing work to make NREGA work for the really needy in our area of Gajapati district. Please circulate the material as you see fit. Its a little lengthy. Please go through it if you have interest in the matter.

Regards,
Dhanada
Association for India's Development (Orissa Chapter)

Ph. 94375 13080, Email. dhanadam@gmail.com Web: www.aidindia.org


21st May 2007


Minimum Wage Denied as Machines compete with people for NREGA Work

AID Orissa Demands that Workers be Paid at least Rs. 70/- a day.

While the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act promises 100 days of employment to every family in Gajapati district of rural Orissa, the implementation of the scheme is suffering from several problems. With upcoming summer and ending of harvest season, agricultural jobs have become scarce. People are migrating in large numbers to find work, while this is the time to avail of the 100 days of work in their locality, promised by the Central and State government. Over the past year the district administration has done its best to create awareness about the scheme and issued job cards for large numbers of potential job seekers. How ever much more needed to be done to create awareness about all aspects of the program including the process f applying for work, unemployment benefits, rules of implementation and crucially about wages. Taking advantage of the lack of awareness of common people, unscrupulous village leaders and contractors who learn about the program, collude with the Block Level Officials to exploit the people for personal gain. While the reality is that the application forms for jobs are not available widely in villages, and most people do not even know that they have to fill these, the government interprets the non-filing of applications as the absence of need for employment in the Gosani block!! Gosani and Kasinagar are the relatively non-tribal blocks in the plains of Gajapati district that contribute greatly to the exodus of would-be labourers to urban centers such as Hyderabad and Chennai. One of the main aims of NREGA was meant to stem this migrataion.

A month ago, Association for India's Development's Rural Technology Resource Centre launched the first performance of street plays in Oriya and Telugu in the bi-lingual Ranadevi village of Gosani Block, Gajapati District to create awareness on how to apply for work and the nature of Guarantee that the NREGA provides. The street play expressed the villagers' growing concern that while ID cards have mostly been distributed as per the Act, no work has however been provided! But administration doesn't know who wants work and when, unless people apply and state when they want to avail of the 100 days that is due to them. Thus forms are distributed in the Play, but since the adult literacy in villages of Orissa is low, most do not know how to read them. However some inspired educated youth of their own village come forward to help fill the forms for everyone, which are then submitted to the Panchayat Still, doubt remains as to what the guarantee is and if they will actually get work. The Play reveals that if no work is provided within fifteen days of their asking, they are eligible for unemployment benefits, which is a unique feature of the Act. Thus it urges them to apply for work and keep a copy of the receipt to claim the benefits of employment or unemployment after fifteen days.

Villagers gathered in large numbers to watch the plays, some even watching them from their homes and shops. At the end of the play people queued up for help in filling the application forms that were made available to them. Fifteen minutes after AID-India volunteers started filling the forms, Lokesh, an unemployed Ranadevi Village youth with an undergraduate degree, came forward asking for work! While the street play troupe proceeded for other performances, he took over the form filling and reported after a few hours at the AID Rural Technology Resource Centre with a long list of those whose forms he filled. We reached an understanding that AID-India would provide him a small commission of Rs 1 for every form that he helped fill that people file with the Panchayat. With thousands of families unable to fill the forms themselves, Lokesh has his work cut out for him. More than fifty applications for work was generated in no time.

Although it took some time for the panchayat to allocate work due to various reasons, eventually a large pond was selected for de-silting and deepening. There was some hesitation on part of the job seekers about their wages. When they were told that they would be provided wages at the revised current rate of Rs. 135/- for 100 cubic feet of earth work (in case of hard soil and is equivalent of 300 head loads of soil to be lifted up to 1.5 m and moved up to 50 meters in seven hours or 420 minutes) many were understandably reluctant. Among the factors that worried them about their productivity were the facts that the work was to be taken up in hot sun in month of May, the labour force consisted largely of older men and women whose younger children have already migrated to Hyderabad or Chennai, the facilities at the site were not ideal to facilitate productivity. Still they agreed to come to work on promise of the revised daily minimum wage of 70/- per day. How ever after 3 days of work in our presence the measurement revealed that the productivity has been only about Rs. 15/- per day. This apparently justified the use of machines to compensate for the lack of productivity of the labour force in sharp contravention of the requirement of NREGA that no labour displacing machine may be used.


A week in to the job, the district administration having realised that large scale machine use is prevalent in Gosani and Kasinagar, passed a strict order against the same resulting of almost all work to come to a grinding halt. To their credit, the administration has been accessible on the matter and insists that the scheme requires payment only on 'piece rate' basis. Even when it allows 'time rate' payment the onus is on the implementing agency (block and panchayat level officials) to ensure productivity norms are met (clause 21.2 of Government of Orissa Notification of Orissa Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (OREGS), No. 23530 II RE(1) – 17/2006/PR dated 15.12.2006). This is being interpreted as a productivity comparable to the requirement of piece rate basis, i.e., Rs. 135/- for 100 cubic feet of earth work.


How ever, in several clauses (e.g., 20.1, 21.2, 21.3) the OREGS insists that under no circumstances one can be paid less than the daily minimum wage (which has been recently revised from Rs. 55/- to Rs. 70/-) for seven hours of work. On the other hand, to be paid by piece rate, the implementing agencies are required to make daily measurements and calculate individual productivity, which is impractical given the lack of adequate numbers of technical personnel.


Adding to the woes of the hapless workers, the administration insists that while the tribal blocks are able to meet productivity norms and earn much higher than the daily minimum wages, the workers of Gosani and Kasinagar are not working hard enough. Secondly, the higher authorities from Central minister of Rural Development Sri Raghuvansh Prasad downwards are quoted to insist on productivity based payments.


Take Navin Parida (name changed) for instance. We met him as he was coming out of his field at the end of a hard day's work. He is nearing 70. Still looks reasonably fit. He and his wife are in the village, while two of their children are in Hyderabad. We asked him if he had been to the NREGA work to learn that the work has stopped. He needs the money badly, but had very little understanding of the intricacies of his entitlements. He has happily handed over his job card to village leaders and finds it futile to keep track of how many days he has worked or how many days will be entered in his job card or whether he will be paid the minimum wage. He is thankful that he and others like him have food on their plate. They are happy to be led like lambs (in his words) and follow instructions. While it is these people that need to rise up and ask the tough questions, AID India is working to help them have a better understanding of their rights and fight to secure it.


In the above scenario AID India (Orissa chapter) is contemplating filing a Public Interest Litigation to seek clarification as to how productivity norms can be enforced when the available labour force is intrinsically unable to match the productivity of their counterpart elsewhere for a variety of valid reasons.


-- Dhanada Mishra, Pramod Panda, Ravi Kuchimanchi, M. Suryanarayana, Ajay Satpathi.