MGNREGA attendance go digital in Kangra district

Nurpur, January 5

After directions from the Ministry of Rural Development, the attendance of all MGNREGA workers in Kangra district is marked online from January 1. This will ensure transparency and check fake muster rolls being prepared manually by panchayat pradhans or ward members in the gram panchayats.

Authorities of the Department of Rural Development had received many complaints that village pradhans were creating forged muster rolls (attendance papers) to please their favourites.

As per information, the Ministry of Rural Development had initially made it mandatory that the attendance of all MGNREGA works involving more than 20 workers to be marked online a year ago. Following its success, the online attendance system has been introduced for all community works to be carried out in the rural areas involving any number of workers. The online attendance scheme has been implemented in the state to check the practice of forged manual attendance of workers in the muster rolls.

The online attendance of every MGNREGA worker is being marked through the National Mobile Monitoring Software (NMMS) by the elected ward member or other representative of the respective gram panchayat. The attendance is being marked twice on a working day.

Sonu Goyal, project officer, District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), Kangra, said the online attendance of every MGNREGA worker in community works in rural areas had become mandatory now and added this system had been introduced in the district. He asserted that the online attendance of workers would ensure transparency and ensure that only genuine MGNREGA workers get their names registered on muster rolls.