New Delhi: The Centre is pushing for Aadhaar Payments Bridge System (APBS) as the best route for making wage payments through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) as it will help the beneficiaries in getting their wage payment on time.
This comes after the Centre found several cases where wage payments were rejected due to frequent changes in bank account numbers by the beneficiary and non-updating of the new account number by the concerned programme officer of the same and non-submission of new accounts on time.
Once Aadhaar is updated in the scheme database, beneficiaries need not update account numbers due to a change in location or change in bank account number. Money will be transferred to the account number that is linked with the Aadhaar number. In the case of more than one account of the beneficiary, which is rare in the context of MGNREGA, the beneficiary has the choice to select the account.
The National Payments Corporation of India data shows that there is a higher success percentage to the extent of 99.55% or above where Aadhaar is enabled for DBT. In the case of an account-based payment such success is about 98%.
APBS is helping genuine beneficiaries to get their due payment and is instrumental in curbing corruption by weeding out fake beneficiaries. MGNREGS has not adopted Aadhaar-enabled payment. This scheme has opted for APBS. The progress of Aadhaar-based Payment System (ABPS) has been reviewed and the mixed route of wage payment (NACH and ABPS route) has been extended till December 31 or till further order.
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