West Bengal government fails to provide employment to MGNREGA job card holders

According to a recent study published by the Bengal government, the Mamata Banerjee administration's efforts to find rural residents who qualify for work under the MGNREGA alternative employment have fallen short of the goal.

Only the panchayat and public health engineering (PHE) departments, according to the study, achieved the government's goals for employment development. According to the study, all other departments were falling short of the goal.

The panchayat department reportedly exceeded its goal and hired 10.78 lakh MGNREGA employment card holders. The goal of the panchayat department was to hire 10.05 lakh people with job cards. Compared to the aim of 8.46 lakh, the PHE department hired 8.46 lakh job card holders.

"However, none of the other departments were able to reach their goals. For instance, the public works department (PWD) could only hire 4.15 lakh persons with employment cards, although expecting to hire 16.53 lakh rural residents with cards. According to a senior state official, the irrigation department only hired 1.37 lakh work card holders out of a goal of 7.86 lakh.

By August 21 of the current fiscal year, the goals were to be attained.

Only 28.30 lakh job card holders were able to get work in the current fiscal year under different state government programs since the bulk of departments were unable to reach their objectives. According to a bureaucrat, around 50 lakh job card holders might have received employment up to this point if the departments had carried out projects in accordance with the plan.

After the Centre halted the transfer of funding under the MGNREGA in January 2022, accusing abuse of funds, the state engaged 42.37 lakh employment card holders in their own programs last year.

Senior state government officials have said that this year's accomplishment is not promising since Bengal has 2.58 crore job card holders in total, of whom 1.38 crore are now active. Therefore, offering employment to only 28.30 lakh job card holders is insufficient, a representative said.

Since the absence of job possibilities in rural regions is anticipated to be a major issue in the next 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the development has been a source of frustration for Bengal's governing party.

"About 20% of complaints made via the Sorasori Mukhyomantri program still concern the lack of employment. Therefore, in the lack of central money, the government decided to provide work chances for holders of job cards via its own programs, according to a senior official.

A careful examination of the departments' performance, according to several officials, revealed that many of them were unable to launch enough initiatives to engage work card holders due to a shortage of funding.

"The PHE is working on initiatives as part of the Center's Jal Jeevan Mission, for which funding was never cut off. Similar to this, the 15th Finance Commission's revenues are being used to support initiatives by the panchayat department. However, other departments do not get funding from Delhi, which prevented them from doing numerous initiatives, according to a source.

The sole exception, according to insiders, is the PWD, which has sufficient funding but was unable to complete projects due to "unexplained reasons".

Senior officials said that if the state wants to employ the greatest number of job card holders in the coming months, it would need to invest a significant sum via the departments in order to start new projects and hire job card holders.

A official stated, "But the issue is that the state's funds do not permit the state to spend generously right now...