Nagaland VBD association opposes direct benefit transfer system

Dimapur, Sep. 14 (EMN): The Nagaland State VDB Association has raised objections to the government’s recent declaration to implement Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) for MGNREGA workers from 2017-18 fiscal year.
A press release from the association on Thursday warned the government’s latest attempt could affect ‘the very purpose of the noble program benefitting the rural areas’ and defeat the scheme’s objectives.
“Nagaland being a backward state with very poor facilities, many job card holders has (sic) not been able to obtain aadhaar cards and to add to their misery, those who have received aadhaar cards also, there are many errors requiring rectification which will take some more time. Presently, only 46,894 job card holders out of 4.25 lakh active job card holders in the state have opened their bank accounts linked with aadhaar.
“Therefore the question of enforcing the implementation of DBT is practically impossible at this juncture as rest of the job card holders comprising 80% who are without bank accounts will be deprived of their employments under MGNREGA if DBT is imposed in the state at this stage,” it reasoned.
Out of the 74 RD blocks in Nagaland, it informed, 32 were “unbanked” blocks.
“The state of Nagaland should not be compared with other advanced and developed sates as we are lacking behind other state in all respect and if DBT is enforced in the state in this stage, the job card holders will be ultimately victimized.
“It is evident that with the present system of implementing MGNREGA program by VDBs in our state, we are doing better than many other states in the country in creating durable assets in the villages which even the ministry is aware of. Implementation of MGNREGA program also improved to a great extent with the RD department focusing on taking up income generating schemes in the villages besides providing employments to the job card holders.”
It requested the department concerned ‘to take up the matter with the central government’ to exempt Nagaland from implementing the DBT system “till such time all the job card holders are able to get Aadhaar cards and open their respective bank accounts.”