Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is being implemented very successfully in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu. The district administration focused attention on the rural areas and started an immense IEC awareness campaign. The district got the National Award for Effective Initiative under MGNREGS for the year 2010-11.
The scheme is being implemented in all the 228 village panchayats in the district. Around two lakh twenty-five thousand people belongs to one lakh fifty seven thousand households were provided job cards under this scheme. Six days of work is being providing to the workers in a week. The daily wage is fixed as Rs. 119. In the 2011-12 financial year 41 lakh mandays were generated and Rs. 46.78 crore were spent as wages under this scheme. In the present financial year 2012-13, a budget allocation of 65 crore rupees was earmarked for this scheme.
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) scheme has come to the rescue of many tribal habitations in Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu by improving their connectivity with the laying of new earthen roads. The tribal habitations in Karamadai, Anamalai and Periyanackanplalayam in Thondamuthur block in the district are benefitted by the scheme with the new road connectivity by interlinking the various hamlets in this hilly area. The road construction was merely not possible in this hilly track under any scheme because of the huge capital outlay. But the MGNREGS scheme with the local participation converts the impossible task to a possible one.
A classical example of improvement in road transport and connectivity can be seen in the Anamalai block area. Here things are undergone a transformation with people living in this area having laid these link roads under this scheme and thereby making these hamlets in this remote area accessible to vehicular transport.
Almost all the tribal people in the area were engaged for work and their effort to clear huge rocks from the slippery foot paths for the construction of link roads is indeed worth mentioning. Before laying these roads tribal people in the area had to carry their agricultural products as head loads and walk kilometers to find the market. The connectivity had saved a lot of distance and time to the tribal people.
Now they are getting better maternal and child health care and public distribution system is available in their door steps. Thus MGNREGS had improved the living condition of the tribal people in the hilly area and at the same time it gives work and wages to them. |
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