11th five year plan envisages 58 million new job opportunities

11th five year plan envisages 58 million new job opportunities

Dwelling upon the state of unemployment in the country, at the 43rd Session of the Standing Labour Committee, Mallikarjun Kharge, Union Labour Minister said that there is an open unemployment of 10.8 million as per estimates available for the year 2004-05 and the country also faces the problem of working poor. Kharge also pointed out that open unemployment in India is not much compared to the size of population but it is the under employment in terms of productivity and income, which is of great concern. The Minister said that the 11th Five Year Plan Document envisages that 58 million new job opportunities will be created during the 11th plan period. The 11th Five Year Plan provides an opportunity to restructure policies to achieve a new vision based on faster, more broad-based and inclusive growth, the Minister said. Kharge said that an environment for inclusive growth has been created by a few flagship schemes of the Government already in operation.

In this context, he mentioned several schemes like National Rural Health Mission, National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) and prominent self employment programmes like Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna, Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Yojna, Swaranajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojna and the Rural Employment Programmes among many other programmes. The Minister said that our Government has taken up a huge task of up gradation of 500 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) into Centres of Excellence (COE) in the country which will provide multi-skill courses catering to the need of a particular cluster of industry around an ITI to produce multi-skilled workforce of world standard.
The Ministry has developed a special Modular Employable Skills (MES) framework for skill development for early school leavers and existing workers, especially in the un-organised sector in close consultation with industry, micro enterprises, State Governments, experts and academia. Speaking on the occasion, the Minister of State for Labour & Employment Harish Rawat said that Social Security mechanisms have emerged as the savior at the time of crisis. Rawat informed that the Government intends to provide Social Security benefits in a sequential manner to the vast unorganized sector. Rawat also said that a labour intensive strategy goes a long way in developing rural economy and this has been borne out by National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which aims at enhancing the livelihood security of the rural masses. Stating that low skill workers, the poor and the marginalised were most affected during the recent global economic crisis, Rawat said that the Government scaled up the resources for labour market to arrest the impact of the crisis on the most vulnerable sections of the society. Due to the coordinated efforts in response to the crisis, our economy has slowly started showing signs of recovery, Rawat added. Speaking on the occasion, Secretary (Labour & Employment) P C Chaturvedi said that the Ministry of labour continues to have consultation with the social partners to obtain a consensus for enacting new laws or bringing about changes in the existing laws. He said that the Ministry has taken significant steps for simplification of labour laws. He said that on the recommendation of the National Social Security Board, a sub-committee of the Board is presently exploring the possibility of extending the social security schemes for unorganised workers.
Courtesy: Ministry of labour and employment release