There is an ongoing PIL in the Supreme Court between Swaraj Abhiyan versus Union of India.
What is the PIL about?
The PIL is about the lack of functioning of social security systems like the National Food Security Act (NFSA) and the National Rural Employment Act (NREGA).
The NREGA mandates that every worker must receive her wages within 15 days of completion of a workweek.
If this condition is not met, a delay compensation is to be paid at a rate of 0.05% per day of delay.
In spite of this merely 21% of the sampled transactions were paid within the stipulated 15-day period.
How is the payment made?
Under the National Electronic Fund Management system (Ne-FMS), upon completion of a work week, a Funds Transfer Order (FTO) is generated at the block/ panchayat.
Then the Centre approves the FTO digitally.
Then the money is transferred directly to the individual workers’ account.
The time taken till FTO generation is the state’s responsibility and the time taken thereafter is the Centre’s responsibility.
What constitute the delays?
Definition of Delay - The current definition of the delay calculates delay days only until the FTOs get generated at the block/ panchayat.
The times taken by the Centre to process the FTOs and release wages are not getting accounted as delays.
Payment Infrastructure - In an attempt to improve the payments process, the government migrated to the Ne-FMS in April 2016.
Prior to the Ne-FMS system, the state governments would use a contingency/ revolving fund to make the payments until the Centre sanctioned the funds.
The current payments system is completely centralised.
The state governments cannot pay the workers even if they intend to.
What should be done?
Not only has the government violated the law but also the worker's rights to timely wages.
The payments infrastructure requires seamless coordination between the Centre, states, payment agencies, and the administrative bodies.
There should also be a clearly defined responsibilities for each one of them.
