LABOURERS ATTENDANCE IN MGNREGA SHOULD HAVE CAREFUL CONSOLIDATING, CHECKING AND INFORMATION BY THEMSELVES.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act came into force on 2006 in 200 districts of the country.Inspite of its limitations this act is ray of hope for working people in the rural areas.However the survival and success of the Act depends on preventing the spread of corruption in MGNREGA.Many safeguards for transparency and accountability are built in to act and also in the MGNREGA guidelines.For instance the MGNREGA guidelines require Muster Rolls to be available at the site of works displayed at the panchayat office and submitted to the Gram Sabhas.This can go a long way in preventing corruption in wage payment since it makes the Muster Rolls available for public scrutiny and social audit.However the public vigilance is required to ensure that these and other transparency provisions are implemented.Fudging of the Muster Rolls ia the principal means through which funds have been embezzled from public works programmes for many years.This practice must not be allowed to persist under MGNREGA.One way to prevent it,is to conduct public verifications of Muster Rolls.This chapter has been written to facilitate the process given under MGNREGA. Muster Rolls are issued for the labour attendance pertaining to a particular site of work and particular period and is also used as a receipt to claim funds from the Programme officer for the payment of wages of the labourers and may involve several Muster Rolls for one work .Muster Rolls are obtained from the panchayat office and then consolidating the different Muster Rolls to find out how many days each labour has worked at this site of work and how much he/ she has been paid.Checking this information with the labourers themselves and checking the information from their job cards available.After the Muster Rolls have been consolidated the actual verification starts and the main task is to find out from the labourers themselves how many days they have worked on the said site of work and how much they have been paid and then compare this with the information on the Muster Rolls and requires to record the statement of each labourer and also require some cross checking through the exercise.