NEW DELHI: After massive victory in recently concluded assembly elections, the Centre has now shifted the focus on delivery. In a communiqué, the government has asked the ministries and central departments to gear up for creating more jobs. The government has also sought a detailed report on jobs created by the various departments since NDA came to power in 2014. Top sources said the exercise would help to examine the pace they have maintained in creating more and better jobs and also to identify the gaps for remedial measures.
“ Provide the details (physical achievements, sector-wise) in terms of employment generated (direct and indirect) along with a brief write up of the schemes implemented for employment generation by ministries for the last two years- 2014-15, 2015-16- and also for new schemes yet to be launched,” the government letter said.
The government has also initiated the move to capture data on direct and indirect employment on a regular basis to improve policy making. Government sources said in the last quarter of 2016, the available data was almost a year old (last quarter of 2015).
The 2015 national skill development policy envisages training 500 million people by 2022. According to government own estimate only 4.7% of the total workforce in India has undergone formal skill training much less than in China or South Korea.
“ Administrative requirements for complying with existing labour laws have been eased. The Central government reformed the apprentice act to increase the number of industrial sectors which can employ apprentices,” said the sources.
Sometime in June 2016, the government had approved a special package including paying the 12% employers contribution to the pension system for the new employees to boost job creation in the labor-intensive garment industry. The government had also increased overtime limits to 8 hours a week, refunding the state levies and brining in parity between the contractual and permanent workers in terms of wages and other compensation elements.
According to the government data available till December 2015, additional 1.35 lakh jobs were created. The lowest job creation was in transport sector with only 4,000 additional employment. The highest job-creating sector was Informational Technology, followed by textiles.
To assess the effect of economic slowdown on employment in India, Labour Bureau under the Ministry of Labour & Employment, has been conducting Quarterly “Quick Employment” surveys in selected labour intensive and export-oriented sectors, namely, textiles including apparels, leather, metals, automobiles, gems & jewellery, transport, Information Technology, BPO and handloom, power loom.
The government in November last year had said that Indian IT industry generated about 3.5 million direct jobs in India during 2015.The number of indirect jobs created domestically was estimated at 10 million. Under the Digital India Programme, employment opportunities with around 5 lakh was created through Citizen Service Centres (CSCs) in 2015, mostly in rural areas across India.