Identifying major challenges in implementation of rural employment guarantee scheme, government on Thursday came out with a set of reforms that include payment of unemployment allowance if a legally entitled worker is not given the promised job on time.

The reform note brought out by the Rural Development Ministry include solutions to reducing delay in payments to workers, providing requisite number of days of work as per demand, improving quality of assets created under MGNREGA and their relevance to the livelihood of the poor and ensuring full wages stipulated under the programme.

Noting that MGNREGA promises that "if you are not provided work within 15 days of your applying for work, you will be provided unemployment allowance," the reform note says that in case the states "fail to provide work within 15 days", workers who applied for work "must be paid unemployment allowance".

The note that summarises nine major challenges and solutions to MGNREGA implementation and placed in public domain to get comments also recommends regular flow of funds, strengthened grievance redressal mechanisms and steps to reduce workers' migration to urban areas.

In a foreword note, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said "these reform measures do not involve any legislative amendment and can be put into effect through executive action by the Centre and the states".

"To begin with, these reforms could be implemented in 2000 of the poorest blocks of the country, especially those with high concentration of SC/ST population," the Minister said.

The new MGNREGA reform note has made it mandatory for all states to institute systems that "pro-actively seek and rigorously record" the demand for work and provide workers dated receipts for their applications asking for work.

It suggests the MGNREGA management information system (MIS) must record the demand for work and the MIS must then track the gap between the date of application for work and date of opening of work.

"MG-NREGA software should automatically generate the pay order for payment of unemployment allowance to such wage seekers whose demand for work is not met within 15 days of demand," says the reform note.

To cut delay in payment to workers, it suggests each block must have a full-time programme officer (PO) and technical staff for MGNREGA rather than the current "additional charge syndrome".

"Gram Panchayats should be able to request for a second instalment for the annual plan after they utilise 75 per cent of their instalment. In order to reduce the delay in payment, states may switch over weekly muster rolls," it says.

Among other suggestions, the reform asks the states to streamline payment cycle and fix time-frame for each stage in such a manner that wages should be transferred to individual account within 10 days of closure of the muster roll.

Government said the reform note MGNREGA was prepared after receiving a number of suggestions for improvements from various organisations and individuals including the Planning Commission, the National Advisory Council (NAC) and the National Consortium of Civil Society Organisations.