Jamua (Giridih), Sept. 3: The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has reached every village in Giridih. But the question villagers are asking these days is where are their job cards.

Giridih has 1.78 lakh job card-holders — one of the highest in the state. But many cards are now lying either with forest officers or their middlemen.

The matter came to the fore when an NGO, IDEA, got a social audit done on Medo-Chaparkho panchayat.

“The truth about job cards shocked us. We mentioned all the data in the audit report. But to our surprise, when the report was sent from the block to the district headquarters, there was no such information in the report,” said Dwarka Pandit of IDEA who resides here.

Tomorrow, the report will be presented before the NREGA secretary in Ranchi.

“In March, forest cattle guard Suresh Ram and one Sadhu Yadav offered to open bank accounts for us. They said they would need our job cards. We handed over more than 100 cards, but neither did we get those back nor were bank accounts opened in our names,” said Medo village-resident Arjun Yadav.

“For two months I kept running to the forest department and met officers but they only assured that we will get the card soon,” said another villager, Beni Mahto.

Besides Medo, The Telegraph team visited at least eight villages of Medo-Chaparkho panchayat from where more than 300 cards have been taken from villagers.

At Pananya, too, villagers said that Suresh Ram and others had taken their job cards in March.

“Suresh Ram took 74 cards from villagers here. We still have not got those back. Moreover, the 15 labourers who had worked on building a road here in April have not got their 15-days salary till now,” said Anil Singh.

At Chaparyamo village, villagers said Suresh had taken 50 cards and recently returned 11. “After three months, some of us got back cards, but we did not get any work so far,” said Jhunwa Devi.

Suresh admitted that he was earlier working for the forest department and had collected cards but he had returned the 11 cards he had taken.

Since residents are afraid to go to the police, no body seems too worried.

Divisional forest officer (forestation) Sampat Kumar, too, had little hope to offer.

“If villagers come and give us petitions we will surely take action,” he said.