Penta Goud, in Singatam village near Hyderabad, says he received Rs 535 for 11 days of work; the NREGA Website says he got Rs 540 for 11 days of work.
Lachamma, in Anantarao Pally village near Hyderabad, says she received Rs 90 for 2 days of work; the Website says she got Rs 93.
Bandaru Mallesham in Kolgur village says he received Rs 1,100 for 11 days, while the Website says he got Rs 1,651 for 15 days.
As in all large projects, the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Andhra Pradesh, which has provided jobs to 900,000 people by spending Rs 88 crore, has seen discrepancies between records and what is stated by those on the ground.
But, after acquiring details on villagers who had worked on various schemes from the official Website, Business Standard found that most had got the wages officially recorded, and instances of fake muster rolls and inflated bills of work were a minimum.
For a programme that its critics felt would see money disappear, the complaints from villages around Hyderabad that Business Standard visited were that the government stopped various works faster than originally planned, and that the work was too hard and rigorously linked to the amount of labour put in.
In Jaligaon in Medak district, desilting of the Nallachervu tank was sanctioned at a cost of Rs 1.47 lakh on May 27, 2006, but stopped after Rs 40,000 was spent once the rains began.
In Anantharao Pally, though three months have lapsed since work stopped on the Karrakunta pond (again due to rain), there are no new job schemes, even as 60 people demand fresh work.
By law, they have to be given work or a dole, but they seem unaware of this fact.
At the heart of this lies the programming that software major TCS designed for the project in Andhra Pradesh after studying the Maharashtra rural employment scheme (state-owned National Informatics Centre has done similar work in 11 states, including Orissa and Tamil Nadu).
The way the software works, a job card is computer-generated for any villager who applies for work at the village mandal (there are 658 mandals in 13 districts) computer centre, but with an entry saying who has verified him. Thus, if his identity is later found to be a fake, the verifying person can be penalised.
The villagers next give a list of the work they want done -- for instance, a well on a particular plot of land -- and this is cleared by the authorities. After this, the computers take over. The computer generates a list of materials required, and the number of mandays needed to complete the work.
According to Col SS Rao, who heads the TCS module for Andhra Pradesh, the Maharashtra experience showed that 40 per cent of the leakage took place through inflated estimates of work and materials.
At no point during the exercise can anything be done if the computer is not involved. No work can start without computer-generated bills and workers cannot be hired beyond what the computer says.
At the end of each day, work completed is certified by a village official, and after a month by a government engineer. No cash payments are made, either for materials or wages.
After certification, payment instructions are generated to the post office/banks where every job seeker is mandated to have an account. And, wages are paid not according to the number of days worked, but the work done.
While there were 500,000 postal savings accounts in Andhra Pradesh till eight months ago, another 15 million have been opened since.
As a result, Rao says, the post office (paid a service charge of 2 per cent) is finding it difficult to cope with the rush, and in some cases -- like that of Bandaru Mallesham in Kolgur village who says he received Rs 1,100 for 11 days while the Website says he got Rs 1,651 for 15 days -- the delay can be as long as a month.
The programme still has glitches, and Business Standard found instances of workers being paid more than what the Website showed and of incorrect names, but the biggest positive is that for each instance of work done, there is a list on the Internet of those who worked and the payments they received. So, anyone can take the list, and cross-check facts at the village.
