Union minister of state for commerce, Jairam Ramesh, said there was no proposal to fix the national minimum wage rate at Rs 60 per day under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.
"Such a proposal is impractical and inadvisable," he told mediapersons on Sunday, adding that the minimum wage paid under NREGA in Andhra Pradesh was Rs 80.
Ramesh, who reviewed the implementation of NREGA in Andhra Pradesh, said the state was a leader in implemen-tation and accounted for 25 per cent of the job cards issued in the country. The only other state that issued more number of job cards under NREGA was Madhya Pradesh but "a large part of the cards issued by the state are bogus," he said.
According to him, job cards have been issued to 39 lakh families spread over 13 districts in AP and 4 lakh people are already working under the programme.
This apart, Andhra is the only state in the country which has an elaborate system for transparency, accountability, audit and payment. The computerised system of monitoring NREGA implementation, developed by Tata Consultancy Services, is in place in all the 615 mandals in the state covered by the programme.
Ramesh said post offices in the state, where the workers were asked to open savings accounts, were paying wages promptly once in two weeks.
In a month's time, steps would be taken for payment of wages once a week. In the last 40 days, 4 lakh postal savings accounts have been opened in the state.
He said the unique feature of the implementation of NREGA was that there would be no contractor on the site. "In fact, NREGA is based on the assumption that contractors are bad," he added.
The minister said the self-help groups, currently involved in the selection of works under the Act, would also be involved in the social audit of the entire programme over a period of time.
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