UP: Contract MGNREGA Workers on Padayatra From Varanasi to Delhi Over Job Regularisation

Lucknow: Demanding regularisation of their posts, contractual employees in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) are marching to Delhi from Varanasi under the banner of All India MGNREGA Employees Association. The march, which completed 870 kilometres on Monday in 22 days, is being carried out demand job regularisation and hike in wages.

The foot march began on January 9 and is a part of the contractual employees' show of strength in order to put pressure on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government to meet their demands. The march will culminate in the national capital on February 1 where they will hand over a memorandum of their demands to the Prime Minister's Office.

Raising slogans against the state government, members of the MGNERGA Contract Employees Union accused the state government of being oblivious to their demands for a long time. They have submitted a memorandum of their demands in every district.

Chidanand Kashyap, national general secretary of All India MGNREGA Employees Association, told NewsClick that: "The plight of contractual MGNREGA employees needs attention. Therefore, we started padayatra from PM Modi's constituency and will culminate at the PMO’s Office on February 1. We have been working as contractual workers under MGNREGA for the past 15-16 years. We have been demanding regularisation of our posts for the past many years. But the government has turned a deaf ear to our request."

The contractual MGNREGA workers of six cadres — technical assistants, barefoot technician, accountants, gram rozgar sevaks, additional programme officers and junior engineers — have been demanding an increase in their honorarium, saying they are getting low wages while prices have been rising.

"It is difficult to survive on such low wages. We are getting old and we have the responsibility of our parents and children. We need financial stability in old age. For the last 16 years, the government has been exploiting us in the name of contracts, preventing us from availing the benefits of permanent employees," said Kashyap.

He added that several MGNERGA employees were recruited following the complete procedure which included advertisements in the newspapers and preparation of merit lists and yet the MGNREGA workers have not been regularised after working for so many years.

Sanjay Dixit, former member of the Ministry of Rural Development, Employment Guarantee Council, who led several protests of contractual MGNREGA workers in the past, told NewsClick: "It is unfortunate that these contractual workers are the ones who are implementing the scheme but getting minimum honorarium. The state government is not keen on regularising the jobs of MGNREGA workers. It is exploiting them paying meagre salaries for much workload.”

Dicit said there was also a disparity in wages. “For example, an additional programme officer is getting Rs 22,000 in Uttar Pradesh but in other states it is quite high. There must be a benchmark for the contractual workers in terms of their minimum wages. When two states -- Rajasthan and Himachal Prades -- can regularise jobs, why can’t Uttar Pradesh?"

About 45,000 contractual workers have been working under MGNREGA for the last 15-16 years in Uttar Pradesh and most of them are in a vulnerable situation due to the "negligence of the government".

"Technical assistants are getting Rs 12,000, bare foot technicians Rs 6,000 while gram rozgar sevaks are getting Rs 8,800 per month. The additional programme officers are getting Rs 22,000, junior engineer Rs 18,000 and accountant Rs 15,000. We all are getting very less salary as per MGNREGA Act. The honorarium was not revised ever since the Act came into existence," alleged a union leader, adding that "contractual workers of the state are on the verge of starvation, and are facing the negligence of the government."

"All we are asking for is to regularise the contract MGNREGA worker’s employment who has been doing the panchayat sahayak’s job for 14 years, instead of giving the job to someone else,” Parshuram Sharma, a contract worker who is the part of foot-march, told NewsClick.

Sharma further averred that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had promised to regularise the work of MGNREGA workers during the 2022 Assembly elections, however, the government took no initiative to fulfil this promise after it came to power.

"We just want job security as we have given a better part of our life to this service," he further added.

Read Also: UP: MGNREGA Workers In Lucknow Protest Against Low Wages, Demand Regularisation

In 2021, about thousands of MGNREGA workers from across the state had surrounded capital city Lucknow to protest against low wages, job regularisation.