Chaos began on Monday, this week, after the new Union government rules for mandatory facial/iris scan for attendance in the VB GRAM G (formerly MNREGS) muster roll came to be enforced in all NREGS job sites.. This entailed the job facilitator on the site attempting to scan the face and iris of the worker, failing 15 out of 20 times, costing the women who were rejected their work day and wages.
Women grouped into clusters of 10s and 20s depending on the varying workforce strength were disallowed to work, simply because a new app did not recognise them, even though some of them have been working for years now.
Lakshmi of Dhoddathimmanahalli said, women, largely older women, whose facial scan did not often match with the Aadhaar photo on the NMMS (National Mobile Monitoring System) App because of lack of clarity in the Aadhaar photo, were asked to wait till about 11.30 a.m.. “We all come here at 8.30 a.m., and the facilitator is also trying to make the app work. But it does not. Women wait till noon losing their wages. Where will they go midday for work?”
This was the scene across panchayats, where clusters of women had to return from the job site because an app was unable to recognise their face.
