UP does a first, revamps NREGS

The decision was taken in a state Cabinet meeting recently held by Chief Minister Mayawati. Rural development department officials said, 8220;The decision will benefit the villagers, who receive work under the Centrally-funded scheme.8221;

The need for clipping the wings of the PWD was feltnbsp;for long. Under the NREGS, men and women workers are given eight and seven hours of work respectively and their daily wages are decided according to the amount of the work done. The Act says each state can decide the SOR for the work done. Since this work mostly relates to areas like digging and basic construction, the rates are decided by the PWD.

8220;PWD follows its norms while deciding the rates. It ignores that its work is mostly done by machines and skilled labourers, whereas under the NREGS, poor unskilled labourers perform the work,8221; said Arundhati Dhuru, the advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioner in the Right to Food cases, who is also supervising the NREGS.

On many occasions, digging of a road or a canal on a rocky and dry soil took two to three days but the labourer received only a day8217;s wages because according to the PWD norms, the work should be completed in a day, she added.

The PWD norms stipulated that 110 cubic feet of work per day qualifies for a wage of Rs 100.

Several NGOs and the state government had opposed these norms. They contended that blanket wages could not be applied in a state like Uttar Pradesh, whose topography is not uniform, with extremely rocky and dry areas like Bundelkhand and Vindhyachal. Dhuru said in other states, the PWD reviewed its work measurement under the NREGS but nothing of this sort happened in the state.

Noting the anomaly, the government had brought an amendment nearly six months ago and the work measurement was brought down from 110 cubic feet to 60 cubic feet in Bundelkhand and Vindhyachal region.nbsp;

Tonbsp;implement similar work scale in the entire state, thenbsp;departmentnbsp;has conducted an extensive study in various regions of UP.

The study noted that the PWD norms cannot measure the amount of several works such as manually carrying mud, gravel, bricks one place to other.

After the state Cabinet order, the rural development department has evaluated all possible works under the NREGS. The department has prepared a list of nearly two dozen main works with 46 sub-heads and determined their quantum, which would now be used fornbsp;deciding the wages under the NREGS.