Ministerial nod to law for job guarantee

The law ministry envisages no problems in the introduction of a central legislation for employment guarantee.

At the inter-ministerial meeting held to discuss the implementation of the National Employment Guarantee Act, it pointed out that Schedule 7 of the Constitution lists social security, insurance, employment and unemployment as well as welfare of labour as subjects in the concurrent list. The meeting was held to expedite the introduction of the Bill in the winter session of Parliament.

The central government could fix a wage rate for the programme and if the minimum wage rate in the states is higher than the fixed rate, the state would pay the difference, said officials.

States should be liable to pay for the material costs as well as pay unemployment compensation in order to ensure that they have a stake in providing adequate employment under the programme.

However, in case employment cannot be provided on account of lack of funds provided by the Centre, the state should not be required to pay the compensation, they added.

"The programme should be restricted to areas where it is needed and not spread all over the country. Flexibility in implementation is required. Phased rollout of the programme and freedom to states to identify the manner of implementation should be provided," said officials who attended the meeting.

Cost estimates for the programme vary significantly. However, the Planning Commission is of the view that the cost of implementing the programme will be much lower than has been estimated so far.

Almost 70 per cent of India's population lives in rural areas, 27 per cent of these are below the poverty line and about 40 per cent of them will come forward to claim employment under the programme.

Further, the programme will be offered in only about 150 districts of the country in the initial phase. This means that only about 8 million people are likely to be covered under the guarantee in the initial phase.

For the current fiscal, the Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana has been given an allocaton of Rs 9,000 crore (Rs 90 billion) and the revised food-for-work programme has been alloted Rs 2020 crore (Rs 20.20 billion), in addition to the food component of about Rs 1900 crore (Rs 19 billion).