The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has been extended to all 604 districts of the country from Tuesday. Announcing this, Union Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the total budget outlay for the extended scheme for 2008-09 would be Rs. 16,000 crore. The amount available for release under vote-on-account was Rs. 4,666.67 crore and the fund released for preparatory activities for 274 new districts Rs. 163.12 crore. Seeking cooperation from Chief Ministers and elected representatives in the implementation of the scheme, Mr. Singh said its success depended on people's participation and monitoring. The scheme, which came into existence in 2005, was aimed at enhancing the livelihood security in the rural areas by providing 100 days of guaranteed employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The Minister said in 2007-08, a total of 3.10 crore households demanded employment, against which jobs were provided to 3.08 crore. However, only 32.26 lakh or 10 per cent households completed 100 days, with 23 per cent in Rajasthan, 13 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 7 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, 6 per cent in Andhra Pradesh and 6 per cent in Chhattisgarh. Leakages The Minister said the first priority would be to ensure transparent and corruption-free implementation of the programme. He, however, admitted that there were leakages and diversion of funds by some State governments. The total share of the Scheduled Castes in the employment was 27.04 per cent, the Scheduled Tribes 30 per cent and women 42.13 per cent, against the earmarked 33 percent. Mr. Singh said the government took several steps to strengthen the implementation of the scheme and bring about transparency in it. This included payment of wages through bank and post office accounts, and introduction of a Citizen Information Board to display all information on the work undertaken. A total of 1,10,28,779 accounts were opened for wage payment and Vigilance and Monitoring Committees set up at the State and district levels, with the local elected representatives being part of the committees. The total works taken up during the year were 15.61 lakh. Of this, 4.96 lakh were completed and works were on in 10.64 lakh schemes.