Sandhu was addressing a meeting of the Development Officers at Circuit House today.

Sandhu said that the NREGA was enacted with an objective to provide legal guarantee for 100 days of employment to adult members of any rural household willing to do unskilled manual work at statutory minimum wage. He said that under the programme, the government will provide 100 days’ guaranteed employment to one person of a family registered under this programme through the village panchayat. As per the revised rates, a labourer will now get Rs 123 per day. He said that he would be provided unemployment wages if an applicant did not get a job within 15 days of applying. These wages too would be borne by the government, he revealed.

Sandhu said that Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had given directions to implement this scheme successfully in Punjab. He said that to implement this scheme, the Deputy Commissioner had been appointed as District Project Coordinator and SDM as Deputy Project Coordinator. He said that SDMs and BDPOs would be responsible to implement this scheme.

He asked the BDPOs that they should get approved their casual leave from concerned SDMs and seek permission to leave station headquarter in future. He said that BDOs’ole was crucial in successful implementation of this scheme in the village. He warned of a stern action agaist those officers fould showing negligence towards implement this scheme. He said that the Forest Department would provide 40 lakh plants for plantation in the villages.

He said that under NREGA scheme, funds amounting to Rs 113 crore were received last year, out of which Rs 70 crore has been spent and remaining Rs 43 are being spent in the current year. He said progress of the NREGA project could be tracked on website www.nrega.nic.in.

He urged the officers to highlight the benefits of these centrally-sponsored developmental schemes in rural areas so that beneficiaries could reap the benefits.

In the meeting, besides reviewing progress of developmental works undertaken by various departments/gram panchayats and for further successful implementation of the scheme, he urged the officers to ensure proper utilization of funds. He said there was a need to create awareness among the rural folk about NREGA so that maximum number of people should come forward to avail the opportunity.

Among those who addressed the meeting were Karuna Raju Joint Commissioner (Development), Vikas Garg Deputy Commissioner and Sharanjit Singh Dhillon former MP, Davinder ADC (D), Mandpreet Singh Chattwal, Prem Chand, Neeru Katyal Gupta, Jaspal Singh, Mukand Singh Sandhu, Sukhdev Singh all SDMs and Mahinder Singh DDPO and Amarjit Singh Secretary Zila Parishad.