Workers coming under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme are struggling to withdraw their hard-earned wages from banks due to several reasons, including technical glitches, lack of awareness, shoddy documentation work and exploitation by disbursement agencies who are meant to be facilitating them.
A recent report titled Length of The Last Mile, compiled by LibTech India, based on a survey it conducted among 1,947 MGNREGA workers from Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan in the first half of the financial year of 2018/2019, revealed that as many as 45 per cent of the surveyed respondents (a little more than 875 of them) were struggling to withdraw wages that were deposited into their bank accounts.
The surveying agency, LibTech India is made up of a team of engineers, social workers, and social scientists who, inspired by the Right to Information movement and the idea of social audits, focus on various aspects of improving transparency, accountability, and democratic engagement in rural public services delivery. Its survey gathered information about the problems of MGNREGA workers about their wages and their work at the rural level. Findings revealed that the village level MGNREGA workers are often ignorant of the banking standards and rights.
Length of The Last Mile examines and discusses the workers’ awareness about banking norms, their access to information, difficulties in withdrawing their wages, transparency and accountability of disbursement agencies and why their payments often stall and get rejected. It also throws light on the experience of the workers when they seek the help of grievance redressal systems put in place only to make sure they get their hard earned money on time.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act provides for 100 days of employment in a year to people in rural areas of the country. The central government has earmarked a budget of one lakh crore rupees for the current financial year. But, according to the survey, even though the government has been sending wages directly to the bank accounts of MGNREGA workers in rural India, they were finding it acutely difficult to withdraw their wages from the banks. Among other issues, the report focuses on the last mile difficulties of the workers in actually getting their hands on their wages.
“In fact, these workers are temporary and unskilled labourers. In view of this, such a survey has been very crucial, for it exposes the ground sufferings of these labourers,” Rajendran Narayan, professor at the Azim Premji University, who has been long associated with MGNREGA workers, told Gaon Connection.
MGNREGA workers had to make several visits to the banks before being able to withdraw their wages. Furthermore, 75 per cent (1460) of the 1,947 respondent MGNREGA workers did not even know that they could do the transaction at any branch of the bank their money came into.
Narayan pointed out that while in cities, account holders would usually receive an SMS from the bank on every transaction, the survey revealed that only 11 per cent of the surveyed labourers (214 workers) were notified by the bank through SMS about their incoming wages. Many of them do not come to know if and when their wages have been credited to their accounts, he said.
This, despite the fact that other than the banks themselves, there are additional customer service points like the Gramin Seva Sthal (rural service sites), business correspondents, post offices and ATMs, for providing and facilitating banking services to MGNREGA workers.
But according to the survey, for 40 per cent of the respondent MGNREGA labourers (nearly 770 of them) who sought the assistance of these facilities, it took them multiple efforts to get their wages. Often, they were charged for these facilities that were meant to be free services.
In Jharkhand, 45 per cent of the surveyed MGNREGA workers (876 workers) had to pay for the facilities (this was highest in the three states).
The problems of the workers do not end here. The rural service sites and the business correspondents do not have the wherewithal to update the bank passbooks of the workers and the latter have to visit the bank despite the above facilities.
“At the rural level, a bank has to also shoulder the burden of numerous panchayats, because of the low number of bank employees who work under immense pressure,” Narayan said. So the labourers have to wait for hours to get their passbooks updated at the bank that may be far away from their village. This takes up a considerable amount of their time, and more importantly, they lose out on that day’s wages, he pointed out. The workers also incur expenditure they can ill afford to get the money that is rightfully theirs.
According to the findings of the survey, a MGNREGA worker spends Rs 31 for commuting to the bank once, Rs 11 to visit the rural service sites and business correspondents, and Rs 67 to access an ATM. The average cost of going to the post office is Rs 6. Forty two per cent of the MGNREGA workers in Jharkhand and 38 per cent of them in Rajasthan said they spent more than four hours on an average to withdraw their wages from the bank.
There is also the matter of workers who have their wages rejected. The official data of MGNREGA, shows that in the last five years till July 2020, about Rs 4,800 crore worth of wages due to the workers were rejected.
“The frequent payment rejection of wages due to Aadhaar card discrepancies and numerous other technical reasons, is also a major problem for the labourers who don’t even know the reason for their payment being rejected,” Sakina Dholrajiwala, LibTech India, told Gaon Connection. The survey revealed that 77 per cent of the workers whose wages had been rejected were not aware of the reason behind the rejection, and had to endure great difficulties at their respective payment centres.
“MGNREGA is a vital scheme of employment for rural India, so it is imperative that workers’ wages are effectively distributed till the very final stage of wage payment,” Dholrajiwala said. LibTech hopes that the findings of the survey will help policy makers get an idea about the last mile challenges faced by the MGNREGA workers in accessing their wages. “We hope this will lead them to take better steps and address the discrepancies in wage payments,” she concluded.
