Left to Centre: expedite employment Bill be expedited

New Delhi, May 3: Accusing the chairman of the standing committee on rural development Kalyan Singh of not being interested in expediting the report on the National Employment Guarantee (NEG) Bill 2004, the Left parties, along with some eminent intellectuals and NGOs, under the aegis of the People’s Action for Employment Guarantee, have threatened to launch a campaign for the implementation of the Bill across 10 states from May 13. They are demanding a universal and irreversible employment guarantee Act, as promised in the Common Minimum Programme (CMP).

CPI leader D Raja met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday and asked her to implement, among others, the NEG Bill on a priority basis.

According to Left sources, the Bill which was introduced on December 21, 2004, has been languishing in the Standing Committee where it was sent following charges of dilution by the Left parties in Parliament. They said that the chairman is deliberately not holding any meetings so that the Bill can be delayed.

However, the Left has also made it clear that without the changes they have recommended, they will not support the Bill’s passage. They say that as per the CMP, the UPA government was to enact a National Employment Guarantee Act immediately to provide a legal guarantee for at least 100 days of employment, to begin with, on asset-creating prublic works programmes every year at minimum wages for at least one able-bodied person in every rural, urban, poor and lower middle class household.

However, they say that the Bill is neither national, nor does it provide guarantee for employment, leave alone minimum wages. Some of the changes they have demanded include a time-bound extension to the whole of India within five years; universal entitlement to the job guarantee and to the employment allowance and statutory minimum wages for agricultural labourers applicable in the states at the time.

They had also demanded that the definition of "a household" must be amended to that of "nuclear family" and adequate safeguards be introduced against the exclusion of women from the scheme.

However, the crux of the matter appears to be funding for the scheme. According to the Left, since the CMP is a policy document of the Central government, the funding for the scheme should come from the Centre as the states are already under severe financial strain.

When asked how the Centre would find the funds (Rs 38,600 crore for the whole country and Rs...