Government has failed on jobs front: Congress

Congress legislator and former chief minister Prithviraj Chauhan said that the BJP-led government at the centre and in the state had failed to provide employment and pointed out that the Devendra Fadnavis-led state government had provided employment to only 27,000 as against 4,10,000-odd youth registered on the state’s official portal.

Mr Chauhan said that according to the Labour Bureau, less employment generation had been recorded in 2015 than in 2009. “Maharashtra has also recorded declining figures in the generation of skilled and semi-skilled labourers,” he said.

Referring to records on ‘Maharojgar’, a government portal, Mr Chauhan said that 4,10,682 youths had registered for government jobs on the portal between January 1, 2015 and July 26, 2016. “The record shows that only 27,313 youth were lucky to get jobs from April to October 2015. This is the lowest figure in terms of generating jobs,” he said.

Mr Chauhan spoke about the worst drought in the state last year. “It was an opportunity for the state to generate more employment through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) and it would have helped control migration. However, the state failed to implement any scheme,” he said. He pointed out that there were 9,356 village gram panchayats that did not spend even a single rupee during the 2015-16 drought. “The state failed to create employment as the performance of the agriculture sector was the worst,” he said.

Mr Chauhan criticised changing the name of Swarn Jayanti Shahari Rojgar Nirmiti scheme to Din Dayal Antyoday Yojana (National Urban Mission) and said that the state needed to show actual results.