February 9, 2022
Abir Ranjan Biswas makes a Zero Hour mention on increasing the allotment of man-days and paying the pending due amount with regard to the MGNREGA Scheme for Bengal
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir, this is about MGNREGA, or 100 Days’ Work. Initially, 22 crore man-days were allotted in the labour budget of the current fiscal, which was achieved by the state government by October 2021. There was a request for a further five crore man-days and that too was thankfully approved by the Centre, and that was also achieved by December 2021. Now, essentially, keeping in mind the financial difficulty people are in, especially the poor and the marginalised, the State Government, under the able leadership of our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, was compelled to create 4.01 crore man-days in the best interests of the economically weaker sections, ideally adhering to the principle of commitment of a democratically-elected government in a welfare state to bail out the financially weaker sections.
Sir, it is worthy of mention that, pending the sanction, the marginalised and the financially weaker section eagerly and agonisingly await the payment of Rs 826 crore related to this 4.01 crore man-days. Also, it is worthy of mention that in the year 2020-2021, on average, we could provide 52 jobs to the job-card holders; in the current financial year, till now, it has been 42 man-days. There has been a request from the State Government to the Centre to allot another eight crore man-days to take care of the rest of the fiscal.
In this regard, I would like to mention that, most agonisingly, the [MGNREGA] budget for last year was Rs 98,000 crore but this year it is Rs 73,000 crore. The Centre needs to rethink this in the larger interests of the weaker sections.
Thank you, Sir.
