Once again Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has pointed a finger at the Central Government for discriminating against the State as far as rural employment guarantee schemes are concerned.
The Chief Minister who has not been in a good term with the Narendra Modi Government wrote on the Facebook that “there is a hearsay that 100-day work will be run in some select blocks of the country on intensified mode. What would then happen to the poor people of the other blocksIJ Would they be deprived of workIJ”
Writing that “attacks on the statutory rights of the downtrodden people are not acceptable” she alleged that the Centre had not paid Rs 855 crore due to it under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
“Why such actionIJ Why poor people will be deprivedIJ Why discriminationIJ” she asked in the write-up. Meanwhile sources in the Sunderbans Development Ministry said that Central funds worth hundreds of crores meant for constricting concrete bunds top protect Sunderbans islands from storms like Aila are going back as the State had not been able to spend them.
Sources said that only “some 30-40 km of bunds have been constructed which is not even 2 per cent of the total target” adding hundreds of acres of lands are getting flooded by the saline water during high tides rendering these areas completely infertile for many seasons. On the reasons behind the non-utilisation of funds sources in the PWD Ministry said that the contractors were not willing to work and had fled the area because they were a constant target of threat and extortion by the rival groups of the Trinamool Congress.
“We are fed up with meeting their demands and have coughed up crores. We cannot pay haftas to the Trinamool leaders continuously and for the eternity. During the left rule we had to pay only at one place and that was the party local committee. And even the amount was far less to what we are charged today. Now we have to pay a number of local Trinamool leaders who double up as goons and whose demands are increasing. Repeated complaints to the influential leaders and the police have yielded no results as the cut money goes in their pockets too,” the contractors said adding his firm had fled the area leaving back the dumpers and earth movers.