Hubballi: Aadhaar may have been introduced to root out middlemen and take benefits of government schemes directly to the beneficiaries, but in several drought -hit villages of north Karnataka, people have not been paid for months for work done under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS) partly due to chaos and error in linking of Aadhaar numbers to their bank accounts, according to official sources.
Take Durgesh Harijan, 25, from Doni village of Mundaragi taluk in Gadag district, who has not been paid his wages for work done under the scheme for the last four months. He and his three other brothers have now migrated to Mangaluru in search of work in the construction industry.
They are not alone in their plight as several other workers too have not been paid under the scheme. Going by local officers, the delay is partly due to faults in linking of Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts. In many cases Aadhaar numbers of workers have been linked to the bank accounts of others and their wages deposited in the wrong accounts. The problem is not confined to Gadag as in Haveri district too around Rs 48 lakh has still to be paid to the labourers for work done in April although the administration is expected to settle the wages once a week under the scheme, say sources.
Fed up with the chaos and the inordinate delay in payment of their wages several drought-hit people of villages in north Karnataka are migrating to the coast or Goa in search of jobs "We are poor farm labourers and don’t have agricultural land of our own. Lack of farming due to the failure of the monsoon for two consecutive years has left us jobless. We have left our village now in search of work as we have not been paid for several months under MNREGS. The officials have not taken up any work over the last six months under the scheme, "said Durgesh Harijan.
Gadag Zilla Panchayat chief executive officer, Manjunath Chahwan, when contacted, admitted there were some technical problems in linking of Aadhaar numbers to bank accounts of workers and this was delaying payment of wages under MGNREGS. He, however, claimed there was no dearth of funds to provide work under the scheme.
