KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday urged migrant workers from the state to return home, citing employment opportunities available under the VB-G RAM G scheme, which guarantees 125 days of work.
After holding a review meeting of the PRD department headed by the minister, Dilip Ghosh, at Salt Lake, the CM told reporters, “There is huge scope under the VB-G RAM G scheme, which offers a guarantee of 125 days of work. I urge migrant labourers to come back and work in their own state. Come back and work with your family. Rs 34,500 guarantee for each job cardholder,” he said.
The state is working towards meeting the Centre’s target of generating 22 crore person-days, while work allocations worth Rs 12,000 crore had been made jointly by the Centre and the state, he said.
So far, 65.62 lakh person-days have been generated, with daily employment reaching 7.09 lakh, he said, adding that the Centre had cancelled 31 lakh fake job cards during the MGNREGA regime.
Ghosh said the government aimed to increase daily employment to 10 lakh person-days by December, with a target of 17 lakh. Slamming the erstwhile Trinamool Congress government, he alleged that at least `80,000 crore was lost by the previous state government over the past four years because of corruption.
Following clearance from the Centre, the state has addressed discrepancies related to Aadhaar seeding and issued about 10 lakh new job cards. The Cabinet has approved the recruitment of 7,190 personnel through the Public Service Commission to strengthen the panchayat administration, Adhikari said.
The recruitment rules would be amended after the Assembly session, with the newly recruited personnel expected to be deployed by April 2027, he said. Another 1,000 contractual personnel would be recruited for one year to prevent a manpower shortage, the CM added.
