Employment generation: CII shares these recommendations with govt

New Delhi: In order to boost employment generation and livelihood opportunities, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has shared a set of six recommendations with the government on Thursday. The ideas range from implementing an urban job guarantee policy to strengthening the supply chain of MSME firms, linking job creation to some incentives there.

The CII said there was a need for allocation of more funds to rural job guarantee schemes to accommodate growing demand and extension of the EPF subsidy. It urged the government to focus on labour-intensive sectors including e-commerce and logistics besides traditional sectors while devising employment boosting policy. Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are growth accelerators of the Indian economy, contributing about 30% of the country's GDP, said CII, adding that they play an important role in job generation, employing about 110 million people across the country.

"The government may provide special emphasis to strengthen the supply chain and sales and service networks. The government may look at the relaxation of complex procedures and compliance linked to hiring and engagement of apprentices" said CII.

"The Government may also introduce incentives and exemptions for every new job that MSMEs generate. The creation of a real-time information system with a separate section for MSMEs to identify the available labour force is recommended," it said.

The recommendations were shared by Ajay S. Shriram, past president, CII, and chairman & senior managing director, DCM Shriram Ltd, at a plenary session on "Job Creation & Entrepreneurship – Way Ahead for Livelihood Generation". CII said the core idea behind Urban Employment Guarantee Programme (UEG) is that the government guarantees work at the minimum wage in order to create public assets and provide income support to the urban poor.

The recommendations come days after a parliamentary standing committee suggested that an urban job guarantee scheme need to be devised to help the urban poor and it must focus on asset creation in urban India.

CII said the government may look at labour-intensive sectors like contact-based services – e-commerce, logistics, tourism & hospitality, banking, financial and insurance, healthcare, construction, textile & apparel and education – as high growth sectors.

In addition, there are the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) sectors. Focused skilling interventions in these sectors while strategising programmes are required and suggested setting up of specialised Sectoral Skill Development Centres with Public Private Participation.

Making on-the-job training and internships a mandatory part of the curriculum will enable greater employability of the youth, it said.

On MGNREGA, it said enhancing allocation will help the rural poor especially those who had migrated from the urban to the rural areas. "MNREGA had emerged as one of the key avenues to provide them gainful employment. This is evident from a steady rise in the number of man-days of employment demanded under MNREGA. The number of man-days of job demanded under MNREGA rose to a high of 6.4 crore in June 2020 as compared to 3.5 crore in June 2019," it added.

Finally, it also recommended the launch of an "Accelerated Digital Skill Development Programme" to produce large and high-quality digital talent in tune with the future skill requirements.

"Under this programme, select institutions could be supported to develop the necessary technology infrastructure and curricula to skill and reskill new and existing professionals in digital technologies. The programme should also include teacher training and development of new pedagogy tools," it added.

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