Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has attacked the Union government's flagship programme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).In an interview to a Congress magazine Ramesh said the programme being run by his ministry was paying wages for work which was unproductive and created no real assets.Talking to the Youth Congress' online magazine Yuvadesh, Ramesh asked how long the "ditch digging" scheme would continue."How much work will you do? How many ditches will you dig? How many ponds will you rebuild? How much forestation will you do? There has to be a limit," Ramesh said."I do not accept that you dig a ditch, take out soil and call it employment. Put the soil back into the ditch. That is also employment... We need skilled employment," he said adding, NREGA guarantees only wages, not skilled employment.The minister said the government would take a re-look at the NREGA programme two years from now. Interestingly, the year would coincide with General Elections 2014.Ramesh said that the country needed skilled employment. He conceded that only 8 per cent of the households in the country got 100 days of employment or more.Ramesh's strong views on NREGA, widely seen as backed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi , have put him at odds with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also.While the prime minister reportedly wanted NREGA wages to be delinked from minimum wages, Ramesh has pushed for linking the two. In at least seven of the 28 states, NREGA wages are higher than the prevailing minimum wage rate.