Modi government has not set target for job creation, says Labour Minister Santosh Gangwar

The government of India has not even set any target for employment generation, Labour Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar told the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

Responding to a question asked in the Lok Sabha, Gangwar said, “No target has been set by the government for job creation.”

The minister, however, asserted that employment generation was the “priority concern” of the government.

He also said that the government has taken several steps to generate jobs for country’s youth by encouraging the private sector and pumping more money into the schemes like Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA).

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Gangwar was responding to a question asked by Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) MP Dushyant Chautala referring to an International Labour Organisation report.

According to the report titled World Employment and Social Outlook Trends – 2018, India’s unemployed population will rise from 18.3 million in 2017 to 18.6 million in 2018 and 18.9 million in 2019.

According to government’s annual labour report, the unemployment rate in the country rose rapidly with Himachal Pradesh seeing the sharpest increase from 1.18 per cent in 2014-15 to 10.2 per cent in 2015-16.

In his response to Chautala’s question, while the labour minister failed to provide unemployment data for 2016-17 and 2017-18, he furnished the number of jobs created under PMEGP at 2.31 lakh in 2017-18, down from 4.07 lakh in 2016-17.