New Delhi:
Employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act or MNREGA has declined, while Rs 128 crore have been misused and work worth a staggering Rs 4000 crore is incomplete, the government's auditor has alleged in its review of the rural job scheme that the Congress-led UPA government counts as one of its most significant achievements in the last nine years of rule at the Centre.
In its report tabled today, the Comptroller and Auditor General or CAG said it has found gaping holes in the implementation of MNREGA in many states and has suggested that the government "focus on developing intensive monitoring and evaluation systems."
In the absence of those, the auditor said, it found that work was abandoned mid-way in many projects, there were incorrect records in 54 per cent cases, income had stagnated and funds meant for the scheme was being diverted for other use in many states.
Many gram sabhas or local bodies had no proper annual plans and several big states like Haryana, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh - three of them are ruled by the Congress - had not even "formulated rules for carrying out provisions of the Act, as of March 2012," the CAG noted.
It is particularly concerned that employment per rural household has slipped in the last two years from 54 days a year to 43. The scheme aims at providing at least 100 days of employment a year to adult members of a rural household who sign up to do unskilled labour under MNREGA. The auditor said in many states wages were not being paid or were being delayed.
It has rapped the Rural Development Ministry, which had requested the performance audit, for releasing "grants in excess of demand and in breach of its own conditionalities." It said in March 2011, the Ministry released Rs 1,960.45 crore without "exercising proper financial controls."
The performance audit was undertaken at the request of the Rural Development Ministry. Minister Jairam Ramesh said today, "I have no objection to the CAG report, it has both positive and negative points."