Chandigarh: Salaries of MGNREGA staff, including ‘gram rozgar sevaks’ in Punjab, have been unpaid since Jan 2026, rural development and panchayats minister Tarunpreet Singh Sond acknowledged in the assembly on Thursday, and blamed the Centre for it, saying it had not released administrative funds.Abohar MLA Sandeep Jakhar asked in the House on Thursday if salaries of MGNREGA workers were pending for the last six months. Sond said it was indeed so. and that the dues would be cleared as soon as the Centre released funds.Wages of technical assistants (TAs), which are paid from the material component of the scheme, have been released till May 2026 but salaries of the other staff members are pending since Jan 2026 due to the “non-receipt of funds from Govt of India”, Sond said. He added that salaries were paid from contingency funds meant for administrative expenditure fully funded by the Centre.Sond said the Punjab govt had periodically submitted utilisation certificates to the Centre for funds, the latest being on July 24, 2026, and assured the House that the pending salaries would be released once the funds were received from the Centre.He added that the first instalment of contingency funds for administrative expenditure under the new VB-G RAM G scheme — Rs 32 crore from the Centre and Rs 21 crore as state’s share — were available.The district-level sanctions had already been issued for payment of salaries from July-Sept 2026, Sond said, and urged Jakhar and BJP MLA Ashwani Sharma to take up the issue of pending funds with the Centre. “The Centre is not releasing funds, and we are the ones facing protests,” Sond said.Punjab finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema questioned why the Centre had withheld Punjab’s funds. The Union govt initially introduced the scheme with 100% Central funding, but later changed it to a 60:40 Centre-state sharing ratio, and was now withholding even its share of the funds, said Cheema, urging Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan to direct the BJP legislators to take up the matter with the Centre.
