The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has provided employment to 1.72 crore individuals in Andhra Pradesh during the last five years.
This was disclosed by Mr D. Manikya Varaprasad, Minister for Rural Development, Government of Andhra Pradesh, at a news conference here on Wednesday.
“The scheme, which has entered into the sixth year of operations today, also resulted in employment to 88.2 lakh households in the State since its launch on February 2, 2006,'' the Minister said.
The expenditure on the scheme was over Rs 14,112 crore so far, he added.
Salary hike
The Government had agreed to the demand of 19,000 field assistants who were involved in the implementation of NREGS.
“It has been decided to link the salaries of field-assistants to Consumer Price Index (CPI) which results in salary hike,” the Minister said.
Currently, the salary for field assistants is around Rs 4,000 a month.
As part of the social audit to tackle corruption, the Government had recovered Rs 21 crore out of Rs 98 crore which was ‘misused/misappropriated', Mr Varaprasad said.
``We have removed 7,790 Government employees on charges of corruption, while the police had filed first information reports on 553. Departmental enquiries were in progress on 2,586 officers,'' the Minister said.
The District Collectors were empowered to suspend officials of any department for indulging in corruption. “The target is to ensure transparency without corruption,” he added.
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