The wage rates for NREGA workers for 2019-20, notified on Saturday has revealed that the hike for NREGA workers ranges from a meagre Re 1 to Rs 17 for various States and Union Territories (UTs).
Workers of 6 states and UTs will have to be content with no hike at all. Workers of poor states like Jharkhand and Bihar, who did not get a hike last year, are lucky that will get an increase of Rs 3 and Rs 2 respectively. The average increase in NREGA wage rate across the country is a measly 2.6%, according to a statement issued here by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha.
It pointed out that for 33 states and Union Territories the NREGA wage rate is less than the corresponding minimum wage for agriculture, condemning its employment guarantee act workers to another year of bonded labour.
The difference is greatest in Goa, where the NREGA wage rate is only 62 per cent of the state minimum wage for agriculture. This ratio is in the range of 60-70 per cent for a number of poor states such as Telangana and Odisha (see table).
At a time when the country is going through one of the worst employment crisis in decades, this meagre hike in NREGA wages is nothing less than a much-touted “surgical strike” on the poor, said the statement.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld minimum wages as a fundamental right and equated payment of anything less as “forced labour”. Unremunerative NREGA wages, coupled with long delays in wage payments - even non-payment of wages in many cases - has turned many rural workers away from the employment guarantee programme.
The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha has demanded an increase in the NREGA wage rate to Rs 600 a day.