The Centre has identified new jobs worth over Rs26,000 crore to be executed with the help of workers under MNREGA during 2015-16. These jobs include construction of 1.8 lakh km of internal roads and roads connecting villages, which do not fall within the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana purview, building over six lakh individual toilets as part of the Swachchh Bharat Abhiyaan and 13,000 buildings for gram panchayats.
After an internal assessment of the scheme, the Rural Development Ministry, which is entrusted with the task of overseeing it, has decided to expand the scope of jobs under the scheme to ensure regular employment to the MNREGA workers and create assets, said an official from the Ministry.
Introduced in February 2006 by the UPA Government, MNREGA provides for 100 days of wage employment to members of every rural household willing to take up manual labour.
The official said that the new works were identified following the planning exercise conducted in 2,500 backward blocks in July-December last year across the country. Under this, about 2.5 lakh specially-trained stakeholder youth had conducted resource mapping, social mapping, wealth ranking and transect walks and arrived at the assets that they require in the village...
These were then converted into the shelf of works for execution during 2015-16. This would bring greater participation and scientific methods in planning of works, apart from focusing on convergence with other programmes,” said the official, adding that it would also address the issue of paucity of works which was resulting in low participation of workers.
On implementation of these works, the Ministry hopes to achieve water conservation works in more than 30 lakh hectares of rain-fed agricultural lands to improve their climate resilience. Also, more than nine lakh hectares and six lakh hectares of land respectively will have assured irrigation, mostly by taking up digging of wells, by renovating traditional water bodies and afforestation/horticulture programme.
Under the programme, the Government aims to provide agricultural jobs to MNREGA workers in more than two lakh hectares of agricultural land, while in the similar area activities like dairy, poultry farming and pisciculture will be taken up. Under the scheme, the Government has targeted construction of 13,000 gram panchayat buildings worth Rs 158.61 crore with the help of rural workers.
Soon after taking over charge last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the MNREGA scheme as the biggest example of the UPA’s failure and promised to make “additions to MNREGA for the welfare of the people.”