The technology initiatives of the Government of Andhra Pradesh in implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee programme has earned appreciation from the officials of other states who participated in the third Inter-State Exchange Programme organised by the Union Ministry of Rural Development.
AP leads the way in the country in technology initiatives in NREGS, it has developed technology interface for every work and task and the best part is that the application has enough flexibility to accommodate any and every situation, Director in MoRD Suparna S Pachouri said at the wrap-up session of the three-day ISEP-3 here on Saturday.
Standing in for Joint Secretary Aprajita Sarangi, who returned to the National Capital in view of the ongoing Parliament session, Dr Pachouri explained the purpose of the ISEP. It was to enable states to learn the best practices from other states and Andhra Pradesh was chosen for ISEP-3 for the initiatives taken to ensure 93 per cent timely wage disbursals. All the ISEPs have been documented, she added.
AP Government fixing responsibility for delay in payment of wages and linking of salary of field staff with the wage payment is worth replicating, representative from Karnataka said.
Close monitoring has helped Karnataka improve its timely payment from nine per cent last year to 52 per cent this year, he added. MoRD should look at replicating the mobile based demand generation and monitoring system of Andhra Pradesh and make common software available for all the states to use, officials from all the 11 states suggested to the MoRD Director.
The wide diversity across the country was to a large extent responsible for the variation in level of implementation, Jharkhand Commissioner of Rural Development Sidhartha Tripathi said.
