The Centre today asserted that that it is fully committed to ensure the wage payment to every beneficiary of the MGNREGA Scheme.

The Union Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Shri Giriraj Singh took a high level meeting of the Ministry officials and directed them to have mixed model for payment route to the rural jobs scheme beneficiaries up to 31^st March, 2023. He said, the payment of wages to every beneficiary under Mahatma Gandhi NREG Scheme is being done using ABPS as well as NACH depending upon the ABPS status of the beneficiary.

It may be underlined that NACH Credit is an electronic payment service used by an institution for affording credits to a large number of beneficiaries in their bank accounts for the payment of dividend, interest, salary, pension etc. by raising a single debit to the bank account of the User Institution (Corporate registered for NACH Services).

The Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS) as one of the routes for wage payment under Mahatma Gandhi NREGS has been introduced for timely payment of wages. The system ensures that there will be no delay in payments due to bank account related problems. The system also ensures transparency towards the payment of the workers. Aadhaar seeding and ABPS are in place under the scheme since 2017.

The number of active workers under Mahatma Gandhi NREG Scheme is 14.96 crore. Government of India is committed towards ensuring timely wage payment of each worker under Mahatma Gandhi NREGA.  Out of 14.96 crore workers, Aadhaar seeding of 14.27 crore workers (95.4%) has been done in NREGASoft, in which a total of 10.05 crore workers have been registered under the Aadhaar Based Payment System (ABPS).

There were a total of 4.60 crore transactions in the month of February 2023 for wage payment, out of which 3.57 crore transactions (77.6%) were made through ABPS.

Government has decided, on the request of States, that to have mixed model for payment route up to 31^st March, 2023. The payment of wages to every beneficiary under Mahatma Gandhi NREG Scheme is being done using ABPS as well as NACH depending upon the ABPS status of the beneficiary.

There are two routes to be used in payment of wages-first is ABPS- If beneficiary is linked with ABPS then payment can be made through ABPS only, and other is NACH- If beneficiary is not linked with ABPS due to some technical reasons etc. then Program Officer can select NACH as the mode of payment of wages.

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