Post Offices not vulnerable to middlemen under MNREGA: Government

Government today dismissed suggestions that post offices in some states, particularly in village areas, are vulnerable to being captured by corrupt middlemen thereby denying wages to poor under rural job scheme MNREGA. 

"No," Rural Development Minister Birender Singh replied to a question in this regard, but said, "Some instances of operation of middlemen in payment of wages through post offices have been reported." 

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said the government proposes to address these issues by using biometric authentication system as in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Jharkhand. 

He said post offices are preferred in some states due to their better reach in the rural areas. At present, there are only 68,000 bank branches in the rural and semi-urban areas of the country catering to over six lakh villages in the 2.47 lakh Gram Panchayats where MNREGAis operational, the minister said. 

"Consequently, there are significant number of Gram Panchayats which do not have bank branches within 5 km radius. Efforts are made to improve the reach of the banks in the rural areas using the Banking Correspondent model under the PM Jan Dhan Yojana," Singh said.