Post Master General West Bengal Circle meets DM Nadia regarding NREGA payment through post offices

Smt Rameswari Handa PMG West Bengal was kind enough to spend two hours with Block NREGA officials, supervisory officers and ADMs, SDOs on 2nd January 2009 and facilitated a fruitful and meaningful discussion regarding smooth payment of NREGA wages through postal accounts. Salient decisions are :=

• Sufficient number of index cards and pass books have been supplied to both North Division and South Division of Nadia Postal divisions and there is no problem on this issue.
• No post office in the district shall refuse to accept cash along with payment advice if this is given against the job card holders having accounts in their names. In case accounts of 10 to 15 % of the workers noted in payment advice have not yet been opened in post office, postal department shall accept the cash and take steps to open accounts.
• GPs must deposit cash along with payment advice in the prescribed format at post office and no payment through banking instrument like demand draft or cheque shall be received.
• GPs must give priority of account opening of workers already engaged/ working under NREGA ongoing works instead of pursuing all the cases at a time, so as to ease work load at post offices.
• Pass books against pending applications at post offices shall be issued by postal department immediately. All passbooks must be handed over to account holders only, not to GPs.
• Attendance of postal officers in fortnightly meetings at block is mandatory for better understanding of the problems.
• Post offices may be opened up to five years for NREGA payments, in afternoons as per the convenience of the workers. All payments shall be made from ED post offices.