NREGS wages: Jairam wants changes in Acts

The Minimum Wages Act allows state governments to fix minimum wages for workers in areas under its jurisdiction. The NREGA wages,as of now,are determined through a provision in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

With state governments making revisions in the minimum wages,discrepancies arise between what is being paid in NREG works and what has been prescribed as the minimum wage.

Currently,there are six states — Karnataka,Goa,Mizoram,Rajasthan,Kerala and Andhra Pradesh — where the NREGA wages are lower than the minimum agricultural wage. Making the NREGA wages equal to the minimum wages in these states will inflict an additional expenditure of Rs 1,000 crore on the central government,Ramesh said.

The Karnataka High Court recently ruled that NREGA payments cannot be fixed at a rate lower than that prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act.

It also said that the Minimum Wages Act would take precedence over provisions in NREGA relating to wages.

In his letter,Ramesh pointed out that though the Centre did have the option of going in appeal against the court order,it was “inadvisable” to do so considering the fact that legal opinion was “unequivocal” in its support for adherence to the Minimum Wages Act. Ramesh cited the legal opinion obtained from Additional Solicitor General,Solicitor General and the Attorney General in this regard at various times.

Amendments in the two laws were therefore necessary to bring them in consonance with each other,he has argued. “A new section (in Minimum Wages Act) creating a separate mechanism for determining wage rate for MGNREGA will resolve the dilemma while subjecting the process to the safeguards of the Minimum Wages Act,” he wrote in the letter.