STATE TIMES NEWS
BHADARWAH: Fed-up with the alleged cheating tactics of Rural Development Department (RDD) and pathetic attitude of administration to redress their greivences, villagers of Kilhotran Panchayat in Changa Block of Bhalessa area in district Doda demanded that Centrally Sponsored Flagship Scheme to ensure employment to the poor, MGNREGA should be abandoned immediately.
Dozens of MGNREGA workers of Kilhotran Panchayat, who possess job cards issued by RDD are these days up in arms against the said department, civil administration and police, as they feel cheated and harassed by them.
Not paid wages for the last three years and also over the allegations of lakhs of funds, meant for them being embezzled and withdrawn in the names of few blue eyed influential people, all the job card holders in one voice are demanding that MGNREGA should be immediately stopped so that the poor labourers may not live in the false hope and should search their livelihood elsewhere.
Villagers raised slogans against BDO Changa, Sarpanch and GRS for siphoning lakhs of funds of MGNREGA, Individual Household Latrines(IHHL) and BRGF schemes. Villagers are also up in arms against police and civil administration for allegedly terrorising and using brutal force against them for raising their voice regrading frauds and pilferage of public money.
“We left our daily wage labour work as we were promised 100 days of guaranteed employment but now we are on the verge of starvation as we have not been paid since 2013 and all our hard-earned money goes to the pocket of village Sarpanch,” alleged a MGNREGA worker of Village Kilhotran Shoket Ali Mughal.
“Our request to the Government of India is that this scheme should be immediately withdrawn so that we do not live in the illusion and start searching our livelihood elsewhere to feed our family,” he added.
Villagers also alleged that elected Panchayat members and some officials of Block Development Office Changa never maintain transparency and instead of holding open public meeting (Panchayat Ijlaas) they prefer close door meetings for planning fishy deals.
“Some elected members In connivance with BDO,GRS and clerk have identified a couple of notorious villagers, and after getting the funds sanctioned they transfer all the money in the accounts of these few villagers,” said another MGNREGA worker Mohd Imran.
“There is no transparency and public money is being looted openly. So my request to the government is that either the scheme should be completely closed or they should come up with a foolproof law so that the money should reach to the Reserving and needy villagers,” Imran added.
