Workers flag glitches in job scheme app

Several workers enrolled under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have complained about glitches following the latest update to the National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS), the mobile application used to record their attendance.

From March 1, the government has made facial recognition mandatory for marking attendance, but several workers say the new feature is not functioning properly, making it difficult for them to register their presence.

The Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) shared videos on social media showing MGNREGS workers in parts of Rajasthan struggling to mark attendance. Women workers complained that they were unable to download the muster rolls, while in other locations, the facial recognition system allegedly failed to authenticate users. They also said attempts to reach district and State officials had yielded no response.

MKSS leader Nikhil Dey, one of the key authors of MGNREGA, questioned the efficacy of the NMMS. “In the two years since it became operational, no review has been held to assess how effective this system has been in curbing corruption. Creating technological barriers for workers hardly helps advance the government’s stated objective. Instead, the engineers who are supposed to supervise these sites should be held accountable for malpractices,” Mr. Dey said.

Senior government officials, however, claimed that on Tuesday, over 22 lakh workers using the new facial recognition feature successfully recorded their attendance on NMMS. Facial recognition was introduced following the government’s e-KYC drive for MGNREGA workers, aimed at eliminating ineligible beneficiaries.

Under the process, mates or supervisors take photographs of workers and upload them to the NMMS application, where they are matched against Aadhaar data. Officials said the additional verification layer was necessitated after the discovery that the NMMS platform had been “misused.”

“This new update was rolled out only after prior preparation. In October last year, we began a pilot in three districts, which was later expanded to one district per State,” a senior official said, adding that exemptions are available in cases of technical difficulty. There has been no extensive outage, the official asserted, and the government is handholding workers through the transition.