Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 1 (IANS) Nearly 4.9 crore rural households were provided employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the last fiscal, says the UPA-II’s report card released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday.
The average wage rate per day in the programme has gone up by Rs.25 in the last three years, says the report which outlines steps taken in the past year for rural renewal, a thrust area of the government.

The prime minister, in his opening remarks at the function to release the report, said that the government was committed to give a new deal to rural India.

He said funds would not be a constraint to serve core concerns of the common man and the government was carefully monitoring performance of its rural development schemes.

The report says that over 35,000 habitations have been connected with all weather roads and over 190,000 km existing rural roads have been upgraded since the launch of Bharat Nirman in 2005.

“In 2009-10, 3,344 habitations were connected and around 35,500 km of roads upgraded/renewed,” the report says.

It says that 18,374 villages have been electrified against a target of 17,500 un-electrified villages under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) in 2009-10.

Under Bharat Nirman, villages without access to public telephones were to be provided with village public telephones (VPTs). While 569,385 villages, out of a total of 593,601 villages in the country, have been provided with VPTs till March this year, only about a third of 250,000 targeted village panchayats have been connected through broadband.

It says that since its inception in 2006, the rural employment guarantee Scheme has provided nearly 600 crore person-days of work.

“During 2009-10, about 4.90 crore households have been provided employment through 40.98 lakh works with 251 crore person-days of employment being generated at a total expenditure of Rs.33,087 crore,” it says.