From May 16, the Centre has made it mandatory for workers under MGNREGS to time-stamp attendance through a mobile application and geo-tag photographs, rather than recording manual attendance, reported News 18.
Currently, there are 15 crore active workers registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). The government has allotted Rs 73,000 crore for the programme in the 2022-23 Union Budget.
The decision related to the time-stamp attendance through the app is taken to find out any leakage in the programme and bring more transparency.
“It has been decided to discontinue the manual attendance for all the worksite wherein muster rolls are issued for 20 or more beneficiaries. From May 16, 2022, for all the worksite wherein muster rolls are issued for 20 or more beneficiaries, the attendance will be captured only through the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app,” the Centre had said in the letter written to state governments on May 13, states report.
Currently there are bogus entries made by contractors in manual registers, wherein workers actually don’t exist or not present physically at the job location. The new development can reduce these bogus entries and give the real numbers of the workers and also will capture the real-time attendance. It will also ensure the MGNREGS funds are actually diverted to the entities who actually need it. Many states had earlier highlighted these loopholes to the Centre, which led them in the creation of this App.
