NREGS Awards kick up dust

HUBLI: Just as the Union government has announced awards for excellence in implementing National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), questions are being raised about the criteria on which the winners were selected by state and Union governments.
Of the 24 districts selected for the award across the country, Belgaum and Gulbarga have won it in Karnataka.However, the other districts, especially Bagalkot, feel that the selection has not been fair. Bagalkot MP P C Gaddigoudar has written a letter to Union minister for rural development C P Joshi, saying injustice has been done to his district "that had outperformed other districts in all criteria" for award selection.
"It is sad to see that Union government's award committee has announced an award to Gulbarga in which central RDPR officials are conducting an inquiry into the `allegations' of irregularities in NREGS," Gaddigoudar said.
According to him, Bagalkot has provided employment to 41% of the households that had registered for employment while Belgaum was able to give jobs only to 22%. In Gulbarga, only 35.33% of those who registered got jobs.
"While we have no unmet demand from labourers, Gulbarga has not been able to give jobs to 17,499 people with job cards. The figure of Belgaum stands at 10,380. Thirdly, Bagalkot has not delayed payments to workers. All payments were made in 15 days. However, Gulbarga has delayed payment of Rs 14 crore while Belgaum has delayed payment of Rs 64 lakh," the MP said in the petition.
RDPR secretary P Ravikumar said there was no competition or screening at the state level. "We have forwarded the names of all the districts that had applied for the award. We have no idea about the required criteria. It is for the central award committee to decide," he said. This is not in line with the Union government guidelines __ "state and UT governments will nominate the award-winning districts of the states/ UTs for the national-level award". Gaddigoudar has brought this to the notice of the minister and sought a re-examination of the selection process.
The selection criteria includes details of work done by district NREGS teams as per the description of evaluation criteria prescribed for the award, the period and circumstances in which the work was done, the initiative taken by district NREGS teams, the benefits derived, and the ways in which the work represents an outstanding and exemplary contribution to the effective implementation of the Act.
If these are considered, then the best-performing districts are Bagalkot, Bidar, Chitradurga, Shimoga and Koppal. The state should have picked up the best three based on performance. "Why did then the state government chose to forward the names of those who had applied? This raises many questions about the selection process," Gaddigoudar said.
Bidar ZP president M Naseem Patel said he would ask MP and chairman of the evaluation committee N Dharam Singh to urge the Union government to re-examine the selection process.