AGARTALA, April 16 (TIWN): After the years of underperformed report cards received from state Tripura and few other states in MGNREGA, unpaid labour budgets, the Central RD Dept. has noticed Tripura RD Principal Secretary GSG Ayyangar to sit in a consultative meeting with Central RD Dept on April-21, whereas discussion will be focused on “Monitoring for timely payment of wages to MGNREGA Workers in FY 2017-18 and Standardization of Case Record-Reg. Earlier on March-28 similar things were told to the Principal Secretaries verbally and later on April 3rd, the issue was repeated with a further date scheduled for a meeting on April-21. It has been clearly mentioned in the letter, "Kindly, recall the discussion held in the Video Conference meeting conducted on 28.03.2017 under the chairmanship of secretary, Dept of Rural Development, Ministry of rural development. In this connection, I'm directed to inform you that it has been decided in the Ministry to organize consultation meeting with your State to discuss the strategy and action plan for timely payment of wages to the workers in FY 2017-18 as per the schedule (April-21)".

However, it's very that after the 2 yrs of struggle led by the central minister to clear the unpaid wages, now the Govt is planning for a fresh journey with better transparency as fast as possible, closing the maximum door for loopholes.  

Reportedly, Principal Secretary GSG Ayyangar was given left and right via video conference held on March-28 following 3 yrs of pending wages.  On that time during month of March in a notice has been published in MGNREGA website and letters also sent to the RD Principal Secretaries of some states which failed to clear the unpaid wages of the labours evenafter SC's direction. In the letter sent by Govt of India, under File No; 1815/ 9/ 2016-MGNREGA-IV was directly subjected to "Payment of Compensation of delayed payment of wages to the workers and issue of delay compensation rule/ advisory by the State Govt-Reg". However, since last 2 years the direct beneficiary has although solved the problems of the workers but the unapid amounts of earlier years before beneficiary system was launched are yet to be paid to the workers. But such issues would never raise by Tripura Ministers, but thanks goes to Modi Govt's initiative for transparency of data releasing that has eased the way of exposi9ng corruptions.

Before that in May-2016, June-2016, July-11, 2016 and 24th March-2017 in total 4 times Centre had sent notice to Tripura Govt and this notice has been given as final notice without extending the time anymore. However, along with Tripura there are some other states who received the final notice. Tripura was also given notice for incomplete MGNREGA works.

The notice clearly wrote, "As per Section-23, sub-section-3 and the process laid in Section 33, Sub-Section-2 of the MGNREGA state govt may frame rules of payment of compensation. In absence of the rule the state govt till time, the rule is frames, may issue advisory/ executive instruction, to the functionaries for payment of the compensation of delay  in wage payment".

However, after all the messes, now Centre has caught the hands of states more tightly to marginalize the corruption rate under RD Dept with MGNREGA scheme.