Rural jobs scheme workers flag glitches in monitoring app

Many workers registered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) have complained of 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 made facial recognition mandatory to mark attendance, but some workers say the new feature is not working properly, making it difficult for them to register their presence.

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) shared videos on social media showing MGNREGS workers in some districts of Rajasthan struggling to mark the turnout. Female workers complained that they were unable to download muster rolls, while elsewhere it was claimed that facial recognition systems were unable to verify the identity of users. They also said efforts to reach county and state officials were unresponsive.

MKSS leader Nikhil Dey, one of the key authors of MGNREGA, questioned the effectiveness of NMMS. “In the two years since it became operational, no review has been conducted to assess how effective this system is in preventing corruption. Creating technological barriers for workers would hardly help advance the government’s stated goal. Instead, engineers who are supposed to oversee these facilities should be held accountable for malpractices,” Mr. Dey said.

However, senior government officials claimed on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, that more than 22 lakh workers using the new facial recognition feature have successfully registered their attendance with NMMS. Facial recognition was introduced in the wake of the government’s e-KYC campaign for MGNREGA workers, which aims to eliminate ineligible beneficiaries.

As part of the process, peers or supervisors take photos of workers and upload them to the NMMS app, where they are matched with Aadhaar data. Officials said the additional layer of verification was required following the discovery of “misuse” of the NMMS platform.

“This new update was released only after preliminary preparations. In October last year, we started a pilot in three districts, which was later expanded to one district per State,” a senior official said, adding that exemptions were available in cases of technical difficulties. The official maintained that there was no comprehensive outage and that the government kept workers under control throughout the transition period.