LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh on Friday signed initial agreements with various associations of industries to help guarantee employment to around 11 lakh migrants who have returned home.
According to UP MSME minister Sidharth Nath Singh, while the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Indian Industries Association (IIA) would facilitate the creation of three lakh jobs each in different industrial units, National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) and Laghu Udyog Bharati will help to employ 2.5 lakh persons each on the basis of the skill profile of the eligible workforce.
The jobs are being generated keeping the migrant workers in mind as they have lost their jobs in other states and have returned in distress and penniless. So far Uttar Pradesh has received over 27 lakh migrants from March 1 till date. Given the fact that almost 1-1.5 lakh migrants are thronging the state on a daily basis by trains, buses, and other means, the state is likely to breach 30 lakh mark, thus becoming a manpower surplus state in near future.
Of those, skill mapping of around 18 lakh has been completed by the state revenue department. The CM has set a deadline of 15 days to complete the skill profiling of all the migrants so that they could be given jobs as per their skills and competence, said the MSME minister.
Singh said that memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed in the presence of CM Yogi whose promise to provide jobs to migrants returning to the state was fulfilled by the MSME department of the UP government. "These MoUs are an answer to those who were skeptical about the fact that the UP government will carry out the gigantic task of providing 11 lakh jobs to skilled and semi-skilled labourers,” Singh asserted.
In fact, UP has over 90 lakh MSME units and CM Yogi has sounded the industrial associations to absorb at least 1-10 persons per unit.
Under the ongoing data mapping exercise, the migrants have been found possessing skills in varied segments, including garments, tailoring, electronics, electrical, real estate, data entry, furniture, carpentry, auto mechanic, mobile phone repair, and para-medic workforce etc, which the state is now planning
to hone further locally by imparting training and also supporting the trainees with stipend.
Meanwhile, the minister pointed out that certain states had considered UP labourers as liability, "but for UP CM they are an asset and the migration an opportunity to use them as per their skills for firming up the economic base of the state.”
However, the industry associations were all praise for the state’s endeavour of skill mapping. FICCI Council member Manoj Gupta and IIA-UP head Pankaj Kumar dubbed the exercise of skill mapping an extremely useful step for the industry. “We are roping in some of the migrants who have already been mapped,” said Gupta, while Pankaj Kumar claimed that IIA was working in tandem with huge MSME in the state to rope in more and more workforce.
Laghu Udyog Bharti president Janak Kumar said that the pandemic-driven lockdown had brought an opportunity along. “The returning migrants are ‘Vishwakarma’ (God of engineers and workers) for us. They will play a crucial role in the restructuring of state post-lockdown,” said Janak Kumar.