Government doubles number of awards to be given under NREGS

NEW DELHI: Government is set to award officials working on its flagship rural scheme of National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGS) on February 2. This year, the Narendra Modi government has doubled the number of total awards to be given out to 81.
“Various new initiatives have been started under NREGS this year including digitization, geo-tagging of assets. We are trying to recognize the best work done in these fields,” a senior government official said.

The rural development ministry is going to identify not just the best district collector, block officials but also the Sarpanch for promoting NREGS. Awards being given out this year would also identify areas such as Aadhar Bank account conversion, convergence of NREGS, transparency, accountability. Geo-tagging is one of the new categories being introduced this year. The government has started geo-tagging of assets created under the programme in association with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to establish accountability and transparency in the scheme.

The event is being called the NREGS Sammelan and is likely to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. “The award is envisaged to encourage and acknowledge the outstanding and exemplary contribution made by District NREGA Teams in the implementation of NREG Act in the country,” rural development ministry stated.

The awards are being decided by an independent committee comprising retired bureaucrats. “After we invited the entries proper field verification has been done to decide the most eligible candidate. The process is still going on,” the senior official said.