The Centre will frame a new sector-wise National Employment Policy in this financial year even as it grapples with low employment generation, Union Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said.
Talks on
“We will come out with a new National Employment Policy in the next five-six months after holding consultations with various ministries, including micro, small and medium enterprises, heavy industries, electronics and information technology, health, education, textiles and more importantly, commerce,” Mr. Dattatreya told The Hindu in an interview. “But first, we have to hold discussions within our own ministry to give it some shape”
He said the policy’s thrust would be to ensure a transition from informal to formal jobs takes place in the country. “Jobs have come down temporarily. Employment is falling on a global level but in India, it has been marginal. Job creation is taking place in the informal sector, we need to get them into the formal fold,” he said.
The pace of job creation fell to a six-year low in 2015 with 1.35 lakh new jobs being created compared with 4.21 lakh new jobs in 2014 and 4.19 lakh in 2013, according to a quarterly survey of industries conducted by Labour Bureau, under the Ministry of Labour and Employment. Another survey – Fifth Annual Employment-Unemployment Survey – of households conducted by Labour Bureau showed unemployment rate rising to a five-year high of 5% in 2015-16 compared with 4.9% in 2013-14 and 4.7% in 2012-13.
Informal employment
At present, in India, around 92% of the workers are engaged in informal employment — those who are not covered by any social security law.
The minister blamed the recent job cuts in the IT sector to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order issued last month to review the H1-B visa program, which aims at tightening visa norms for skilled workers and technology shifts.
“The job losses in the IT sector are due to the (recent) policy announcements by the American government. Secondly, the whole industry is going ahead with automation as a result of which the manpower requirement is going down,” he said.
Executive search firm Head Hunters India said in a report on May 14 that IT sector will go for 1.75 lakh-2 lakh annual job cuts in the next three years due to “under-preparedness in adapting to new technologies.”
“Companies are going ahead with automation and job shifts are happening. Nobody had imagined this sea change which should have been thought of ten years back. There should have been a vision. For instance, what will happen to the job market in 20 years? That vision was lacking and there was policy paralysis. We have to think about the IT sector too in a holistic manner,” Mr. Dattatreya said.
A National Employment Policy was planned by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government but a draft Policy was released on June 16, 2014 when the NDA government took charge at the Centre. A two-page document, it talked about providing skill development in the unorganised non-farm sector such as construction.
Published - May 16, 2017 09:43 pm IST
