Imphal, March 16 2009: Fourteen NREGS workers of Uchekon Gram Panchayat have jointly submitted a complaint application to the State Programme Co-ordi-nator of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Commissioner RD and PR against the Pradhan of Uchekon Nong-chup Gram Panchayat Wa- hengbam Birlal Singh for illegal possession of the Post Office Passbooks and evil design to withdraw the wags of NREGS workers by obtaining signature on blank withdrawal slips.

According to a statement issued by director of Human Rights Law Network Mei-houbam Rakesh, the pri- mary concern of the said 14 NREGS workers is to ensure that the NREGS work ers to withdraw their wages directly from the Post offices concerned on their own.

In their complaint application, the aggrieved NREGS workers have stated that the works under the scheme have been implemented in the Uchekon No- ngchup Gram Panchayat since April 1, 2008.But the actual initiation of works have been started on October 23, 2008 and the same was continued upto December 21, 2008. However, there were several interruptions during these working days.

All the NREGS workers have been engaged without issuing job cards and bank passbooks by the said Pradhan.

Over and above, the muster rolls were not maintained a the worksites.

However, the workers were asked to put their respective signatures on the blank muster rolls.

Further the said Pradhan had obtained signatures of the workers on blank withdrawal slips.

Earlier in two instances, the said Pradhan had disbursed the wages to the workers directly after withdrawing the same from the Post Officer concerned.

However, the amount of money he had disbursed was quite less than the actual amount of money shown in the relevant Muster rolls.

At present the NREGS workers have some amount of unpaid wags, which are required to be paid for the works done earlier.

One Takellambam Demona Chanu who accessed certain information under the Right to Information Act, 2005.In the said information obtained under RTI, the Pradhan had furnished false information that all job cards and post office passbooks were handed over to respective job card holders and their is no question of holding th e job cards and passbooks by him.

After ascertaining this fact, the NREGS workers had visited the said Pradhan at his house on March 14, 2009 and demanded to hand over their job cards and passbooks.

However, after serious persuasion, the said Pradhan had handed over fourteen job cards to their respective job card holders.

But he refused to hand over the rest of the passbooks by saying that he would like to withdraw the wages and he will distribute the wages which is very much contrary to the provisions of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005. The statement further aid that Human Rights Law Network would take up the matter to the law court in the event of failure on the part of th State Programme Co-ordinator to rectify the defects and maladies in the implantation of the NREGS in accordance with the operational guidelines issued by the authority.

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