Saturday, 25 September 2021 | PNS | Dehradun
The district administration of Nainital has received over 300 applications in the last two months from people of rural areas to get jobs under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) through WhatsApp. In the last week of July, the chief development officer (CDO), Sandeep Tiwari had released a WhatsApp number as an initiative to provide job opportunities to the migrants who had returned to their villages in the district during the second wave of Covid-19 and were searching for jobs here. Talking about its success so far, the CDO said that the administration has received a great response from people of rural areas of the district. He said that the district has also surpassed its given target in the past two months to provide jobs under MGNREGA owing to this initiative.
“We have received a total of 318 applications so far from various rural areas of the district. Once we receive an application, we thoroughly verify the information provided by the applicant. After its approval, the eligible applicants are approached by the officials and a job is provided within the stipulated time,” stated Tiwari. He said that this initiative has minimised the time of contact between applicants and officials besides causing an unwanted delay in getting the jobs due to the process of approaching middlemen by many to get the jobs under this act. He revealed that on average, over 100 rural people are being given jobs under MGNREGA every month. Besides this, the CDO disclosed that the administration has also received some applications from well-educated people, mostly from non-rural areas who clearly cannot get the jobs as only unskilled manual work is provided under the MGNREGA. Tiwari informed that under MGNREGA, rural people above 18 years are provided with a minimum of 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year under which they do unskilled manual work. To get the jobs under this act, the eligible people of the Nainital district can apply through the WhatsApp number 7906999766, he added.
