Janta hum jidar kaam karte hai, udar hi mar jathe hai, ( We get cheated at the very place we work) said Nathu Dada, a resident of Khamapur village, Bhimpur block in Betul district, Madhya Pradesh, at a cluster-level advocacy workshop held on October 18, 2008, at Chhindwara, under the third phase of the PACS Program mes NREGS Campaign 2008.

Nathus comment refers to delays in payment for work that he and his friends completed in their village, under the NREGS. This is a sentiment that was echoed by most community representatives at the workshop.

Around 65 people attended the workshop, including representatives from CSOs and villages covered under the campaign in the Chhindwara cluster. Similar workshops were held in the state in Mandla and Chattarpur, on October 16 and October 20, 2008 respectively.

The participants views were heard by an expert panel that included R Malviya from the National Institute of Women, Child and Youth Development (NIWCYD), Nagpur, Sachin Kumar Jain and Prashant Dubey from Right to Food, Bhopal, and Suresh Mishra, a consultant.

The workshop was also attended briefly by zilla parishad president Navodita Dobley and vice-president Krishna Kumar Dobley.

Nathu Dada was not the only person expressing his anger about delayed payments. Some beneficiaries have had to shell out money from their own pockets!

Ramchand Nowre from Jammuniya village, Sirepani panchayat, Bicchua Chhindwara district, owns five acres of land. A total of 17 wells were slated to be dug under the NREGS on private land, in three villages of the panchayat; Rs 1 lakh had been allotted for each well. However, by October 2008, after six wells were dug, the sarpanch still did not release payment.

Ramchand had no option but to pay wages to the 12 workers hired to build the well on his land. He borrowed Rs 5,000 from the moneylender at an interest rate of 3% per month and made partial payment of the wages. At the cluster workshop he said he had not received his own wages either, six weeks after the well was constructed. Ramchand still had to pay the workers for 10 weeks; in all, a sum of Rs 30,000.

The remaining wells that were being constructed in the village under the NREGS collapsed after the rains forcing people to hire workers to repair them. The entire job was done within a span of three months.

Workers in Jammuniya village have asked the sarpanch to start new projects under the NREGS, but the sarpanch is allegedly asking each person for Rs 2,000 in order to initiate new work under the scheme.

Similarly, Gendlal Yuvnati and his wife, who live in the same village and earn a meagre income from the one hectare of land they own, have spent Rs 8,000 of their own money to pay workers who dug a well on the land. Twelve workers were appointed for the job. Wages for 12 weeks still has to be distributed; Gendlal has no idea where he will get the money from.

As Nattulal Sarate, who works as an NREGS mate in Dholpul village, Chhindwara district, pointed out, people on whose lands wells have been built feel obliged to make payments to the workers although it is the government that is supposed to foot the bill. Gendlal said there were 19 others like him who had run up huge debts to pay workers hired to dig wells on their land.

The people have no idea how much money the 12-member gram panchayat received for the work. There was no monthly meeting . Nobody knows where the material comes from and how much money is spent on it, or how much is available. All we know is that we have not been paid, Gendlal said.

Workers recently asked for a re-estimation of the work to be carried out, as they felt that the money allotted for digging wells -- Rs 1 lakh per well -- was not enough. Gendlal said that when he approached the sarpanch for a re-assessment he was asked to pay Rs 2,000 towards the cost of the re-estimation. The new estimate shows that an additional Rs 95,000 is required.

Sukhbhati Uike from Sirepani village in Bicchua block, Chhindwara district, has not received payment for 40 days of work she did under the NREGS. She was among 30 people hired to dig 17 wells in the village. She said: Only on lands owned by slightly better off farmers have the wells been completed because they can afford to spend their own money. The other wells have remained incomplete one farmer sold two buffaloes for Rs 20,000 to get the work completed on his land.

Delays at the bank

In Ghoda Dhongri village in Betul block, workers have not received NREGS wage payments since July 2008. For four consecutive days they travelled 12-14 km to the bank where they had opened accounts, only to learn that their wages had not yet been transferred. Finally, they were assured that wages would be disbursed the next day. But when they got to the bank they were told that the money had been given to customers who had visited the bank earlier in the day, and that the bank was now short of money!

Workers in four other villages in the district -- Deshwadi in Shahpur block and Marsilpatti, Mokhamal and Mokharaiyyat in Betul block -- reported similar experiences.

Many of the workers believed that things were better when they were being paid directly by the sarpanch. Even if wages were delayed, they did not have to go very far to get it. Or lose a days wages commuting to and from the bank.

Suchita Swaroop of the Society for Rural Upliftment (SRUB), which has taken up the issue of delayed payments in banks, explained that banks had been allowed to open up separate counters for NREGS transactions but they complained that they were short-staffed.

Delayed payments directly negate the N REGSs objectives. Bhimpur block, in the predominantly tribal Betul district, is witness to large-scale migration every year which could have been minimised by the NREGS. Ninety per cent of marginal landholders and landless workers continue to migrate to various parts of the state in search of work, as the NREGS has not yielded any immediate benefit. Twenty-five wells had to be dug under the scheme in villages under the Palaspani and Khamapur panchayats, but the panchayats were delaying supply of the required material, and wage payments had not been made for 30-35 days, community representatives disclosed at the cluster workshop.

Although people have protested against the delayed payments, the administration appears unmoved. In Niwari village, Jammuniya panchayat, Chhindwara district, 12 workers were hired to build an anganwadi bhavan under the NREGS, at Rs 69 per person per day, in March 2008. Despite the work being completed in April 2008, no wages were forthcoming. The workers were told that they would not be given their wages until the sub-engineer carried out an evaluation. They protested, and, on June 1, 2008, barred entry into the anganwadi bhavan. But this too proved futile. Till October 2008, neither workers nor mates at the site had received their wages. A total of Rs 18,000 is pending.

Denial of work to people with disabilities

Apart from problems related to payments, the workshop proceedings highlighted denial of jobs to physically challenged persons. Sanjay Devtale of Satnoor village, Saunsar block, Chhindwara, is among 13 other disabled people in the village who have not yet received any work under the NREGS. Devtale said: The others have no idea that we too must be given work. Most of us have completed high school, so are able to read and write we can be given work as mates, we can distribute water to workers at the worksite, or disabled women can run a crche for the workers children. But we are denied work because we are disabled.

Positive outcomes

A few positive case studies also emerged at the workshop. Yemu Devchand Dhamdar, aged 39, in Bhilapur village, Saunsar block, Chhindwara, is a widow with two children. She owns two acres of land - barely enough to make ends meet. So, Yemu would often travel to neighbouring villages in search of work. Her name was proposed for construction of a well under the NREGS, for which a sum of Rs 142,600 was sanctioned. She also fixed a pump. As a result, not only has her income from agriculture increased, she has bought a cow and sells milk worth Rs 80 per day. Thanks to the extra money she has been able to enrol her daughter in Class IX.

Another positive case relates to Babulal Jogis work as sarpanch of Ghoti panchayat, Chhindwara. Six wells have been built in the village under the NREGS, and no beneficiary has had to spend his own money. I arranged for the cement and other material for digging the wells, and made sure that the money was used properly , he said. The little money that was saved was used to get a compound wall built around the playground of the village school; earlier, the ground was used as an open toilet.

Sachin K Jain from the Right to Food campaign urged participants at the workshop to start viewing the NREGS as a legal entitlement rather than just another government scheme.

The workshop concluded with the identification of issues at the ground level as well as at the policy level for discussion at a state policy advocacy workshop in November 2008.