Telangana government offers perks for industries hiring locals
HYDERABAD: The State Cabinet on Wednesday decided to provide additional incentives to industries which will provide more employment to local youths. It will also give additional incentives to IT industries which will open their units in Hyderabad, except for the western part of the city.
The Cabinet approved the Hyderabad Grid (growth in dispersion) policy for the same and this would help the spread of IT industries around Hyderabad. Chaired by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, the Cabinet felt that a large number of industries were moving to Telangana due to TS-iPASS. But there was a need for a policy to encourage the industries to provide more employment to local youths, the Cabinet felt.
It observed that Maharashtra (80 per cent), Karnataka (75 per cent), AP (74 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (70 per cent) were implementing the policy of providing incentives only to those industries that provide stipulated percentage of employment to local youths.
However, the policy of these States faced a lot of criticism from the industry and the media that it had violated the constitutional provisions of equality.
Also, Article 16 states that no citizen shall, on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, descent, place of birth or residence, be ineligible for or discriminated against in respect or any employment or office under the State.
The government, instead of adopting such negative measures, proposed an innovative two-pronged strategy to create a favourable environment to ensure that local youth are employed.
It would ensure the availability of skilled manpower through institutions such as TASK, tagging core industries with ITIs/polytechnics to ensure the continuous availability of skilled manpower. The additional incentives would be given to industries under two categories.
If the 70 per cent semi-skilled and 50 per cent skilled manpower is engaged from locals, these industries would come under Category-2. Industries which would engage 80 per cent semi-skilled and 60 per cent skilled manpower would fall under Category-2. Ten per cent additional incentives would be given for medium and large-scale industries in these two categories.
Micro and small-scale industries are already getting 100 per cent incentives. In addition, these industries would get a power subsidy of 0.50 paise and medium and large industries 0.75 paise per unit for five years. The category-1 and 2 industries would get 5 per cent additional capital incentive.
The government would also give Rs 3,000 per head for micro, small and medium industries for skill development and Rs 5,000 per head for large-scale industries.