Bhubaneswar: “Odisha strides ahead of national average in many indicators of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)”, said the Odisha chief secretary Asit Tripathy.

The chief secretary along with the development commissioner Suresh Chandra Mohapatra Wednesday took a review meeting of the MGNRES governing body. The panchyati raj principal secretary Deo Ranjan Kumar Singh outlined the issues for the discussion.

The State Mission director, Rajesh Patil said,” Odisha is ahead of national average in the indicators like project completion, geo-tagging, timely payment of wages, individual beneficiary based projects, e-payment and employment generations. Around 91% of the projects upto FY19 have been completed against national average of 89.5%. Similarly, 95% of the assets created under MGNREGS during Phase-I and 84% assets created under Phase-II have been geo-tagged against national average of 91% and 79% respectively. With regard to timely payment of wages, 99.4% of payments have been made within the scheduled timeline against the national average of 96.5%. The completion of individual beneficiary based projects has gone up to 86% against national average of 68%. The percentage of workers seeded with Aadhar number and paid their wages through e-payment is around 89% against national average of 74%. The percentage of man days created is 85% of the approved labour budget against the national average of 79.6%. In the current year, 844.92 man days have been generated by 20th January which is 14.67 lakh more than the man days created during FY 19. “

Panchyati Raj principal secretary Singh said,”Effective convergence have been made in projects like green fencing, nutri-garden and plantations in AWCs, development of rural park, establishment of panchyat library, building of GP Ghara, beautification of multi-utility GP tank, inter-cropping plantation, fodder cultivation, construction of cattle shed, dug well and land development. Lemon grass cultivation in convergence of MGNREGS has proved effective in Sonepur district. Farmers can earn Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 per acre through this cultivation.”

Principal chief conservator of forest(PCCF) Sandip Tripathy was present.