Centre moots e-payment solution

BHUBANESWAR: As delay in payment of wage under the rural job scheme MGNREGS has emerged as a major headache for the Government, the Centre has proposed real-time transaction based e-Governance solution to overcome the problem. Though the business correspondent model implemented in a few districts of the State was found suitable, it could not be operationalised in all the districts due to shortcomings of commercial banks. The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has elicited views of the State Government on the proposed real-time transaction in which payments to the workers’ accounts could be made with less possible time. ‘’The electronic payment component for crediting payments to the workers’ accounts digitally would require implementation of business correspondent model in all districts for timely payment to the workers,’’ said Panchayati Raj Secretary PK Jena in his response to MoRD’s query.   At present, the business correspondent model is operational in Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Ganjam, Gajapati, Jajpur, Mayurbhanj and Puri through banks like SBI, ICICI and UBI (United Bank of India). The State Government mooted electronic payment as proposed by the Centre in these seven districts on a pilot basis and basing on the success of the model the same could be replicated in the remaining districts. As the Central account of MGNREGS is opened in the Secretariat branch of the SBI at State level, funds will flow from the Central account to the banks operating business correspondent model in different districts. ‘’The proposed solution to be developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC) would integrate the software applications of different banks with NREGSoft (software used for e-Muster) and the fund flow mechanism from central account to the accounts of the workers,’’ Jena said. The existing software solution needs integration of e-Measurement with e-Muster to capture all the processes involved in calculation and recording of material and wage payment, he said.   The financial transactions of the line departments under MGNREGS need to be incorporated in the proposed module to generate panchayat and block wise reports of the departments. Asserting that the State is ready with IT infrastructure and manpower up to gram panchayat level to roll out the proposed IT initiative, he sought Central assistance for capacity building and technical manpower for implementing the solution.