States together owe the unemployed workers across the country nearly Rs 110 crore as unemployment allowance, having failed to provide them jobs within the stipulated 15-day deadline since they applied for under the UPA’s flagship scheme MGNREGA.
Rules under the rural job scheme mandate the States to pay the daily allowance to a registered worker if he is not provided a job within 15 days of the receipt of job application. The rate of the allowance is fixed by the State Governments, but it should not be less than one-fourth of the wages for the first 30 days of unemployment and half of the wages beyond this.
However, keeping in view the poor past track record of the States in doling out the allowance with majority of them yet to notify the related rule, the poor workers who are mostly illiterate cannot expect much this year too but wait to get their rightful dues.
Officials at the Union Rural Development Ministry which oversee the central scheme said that Meghalaya tops the list with Rs 14 crore as unemployment allowance due to a total of 2013247 job days to be followed by Bihar (Rs 11 crore).
Presently, only nine States — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Andaman & Nicobar — have notified rules for unemployment allowance.
In most cases, the defaulter States have escaped paying the due to the workers. According to the statistics, Andhra Pradesh is the only state which does not have to pay any unemployment allowance during the period. Rajasthan has to shell out Rs 11 crore for 15,56,886 job days while for Arunachal Pradesh the due amount is Rs 8 crore (13,20,007 job days). Chhattisgarh with 3,19,830 job days is due to pay Rs 2.31 crore as allowance to the registered workers who had sought job during the period.
For 2012-13, allowance payment in Arunachal Pradesh was due to a total of 11,05,510 job-days, the highest in the country followed by Manipur (2,97,139 job-days) while Jammu & Kashmir had held it up for 2,19,391 job-days.
The previous year, a total of 2,48,500 job-days were due for Nagaland while Bihar did not pay unemployment allowance for 3,70,94 job-days. The Madhya Pradesh Government failed to pay allowance for 1,16,278 job-days while Tamil Nadu’s due was for 77,205 job-days, as per the Ministry data.