Chandigarh, May 3:
In a spectacular performance, the Rural Development and Panchayats Department has incurred the highest ever expenditure of 62 percent thereby achieving 60 percent additional persondays during the last fiscal.
Notably, the department was assigned labour budget target of 250 lakh persondays pertaining to Rs. 800 crore by Government of India (GoI) for fiscal year 2020-21. Subsequently, State Government revised the targets in view of the financial stimulus package announced by GoI which accordingly approved the target of 360 lakh persondays to the tune of Rs. 1500 crore.
Disclosing this, Rural Development and Panchayats Minister Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa said that the number of job cards completing 100 days of employment in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019-20 stood at 7688 while during FY 2020-21, the figures rose exponentially to 27450 which is an increase of 257 percent. The figure during previous SAD-BJP regime during 2016-17 was a mere 3511. Similarly, in comparison to 176 during 2016-17, 7227 individuals have derived benefit of cattle sheds for rearing of livestock under the scheme in 2019-20 while it went up to 65000 in 2020-21 i.e. an increase of 800 percent. Notably, a total of 11.49 lakh individuals availed work during 2020-21 compared with 9.08 lakh in 2019-20 thus signifying an increase of 30 percent whereas during 2016-17, the figure stood at mere 6.5 lakhs, said Tript Bajwa.
Pointing out further, the Minister said that as many as 157978 new job cards were opened in 2019-20 which saw further upswing to 211608 in 2020-21 signifying an increase of 34 percent while during 2016-17 only 101754 new job cards were opened. “As many as 7.53 lakh households were provided employment during 2019-20 and 9.52 lakhs in 2020-21 thus expanding by 26 percent. The count during 2016-17 stood at 5.36 lakhs”, revealed Tript Bajwa adding in terms of timely wage payments, the percentage was 77 percent in 2019-20 with 89 percent during 2020-21, implying an increase by 12 percent while in 2016-17 only 27 percent got the benefit.
Pertinently, the department has also taken up 14699 projects in the Government schools under MGNREGS at a total cost of Rs. 190 crore while the cost under MGNREGS amounted to Rs. 136 crore with Rs. 65 crore spent till March 31, 2021. Likewise, as many as 885 works of stadiums/playgrounds at the rate of Rs. 5 per block project have been identified with total cost of Rs. 103 crore and expenditure of Rs. 45 crore under MGNREGS till March 31, 2021.The deployment scheme of ‘Van Mittars’ was launched for maintenance of plantation done under MGNREGS and for every 200 plants, ‘Van Mittars’ were deployed for 100 days resulting in deployment of 25000 Van Mittars, added Tript Bajwa.
