By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Feb 26: Meghalaya has a lower unemployment rate compared to the national average.
Replying to a query from Congress MLA Gabriel Wahlang on the state’s unemployment rate and rank nationally, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma told the Assembly on Monday that the unemployment rate in Meghalaya is around 3% as against the national rate of around 4.7%.
Sangma said the government had been able to create around 2.34 lakh jobs in the last 3 to 4 years.
He mentioned that it is implementing several schemes/programmes for the creation of employment opportunities. These include MGNREGS, CM ELEVATE, PRIME program, FOCUS, FOCUS +, mission mode programmes in agriculture, Meghalaya grassroots music project, CM youth centre, national rural livelihood mission, skill Meghalaya etc.
To a query about the number of jobs the government aims to provide this year, he said, “We will target as much as possible every year, but for the next five years, it is 5.5 lakh jobs. So, roughly, one lakh jobs are to be created every year for the next five years through the different programmes.”
Sangma said over 500 jobs were created for doctors over the past two years with an additional 300 positions created for nurses and other technical staff.
“In the Police department, close to 1,000 were employed,” he said, adding that nearly 1,000 teachers were also recruited.
“If you look at big sectors, we created almost 3,000 jobs in last three years. We could not collect the number of casual or contractual employees and various positions generated at district-level as it is vast,” he said.
To another query, he said recruitments have been carried out through the District Selection Committee (DSC) in the last two years but the same was not at the desired level.
Admitting that there could be one or two districts with less recruitment, he said the reason was COVID and court cases relating to the roster system.
According to him, after the roster system was implemented, there was confusion and complications in terms of clarifications by the DSC where they had to take approvals from the Personnel department before calling interviews.
Sangma said his government has now allowed the DSC, headed by the Deputy Commissioner, to go ahead, approve the vacancies and call for recruitment. He said the DSC will consult the Personnel department only if there is confusion.
Joining in, Leader of Opposition Ronnie V Lyngdoh sought a breakup of the 5.5 lakh jobs to be created in the next 4-5 years as envisioned by the CM.
To this, Sangma said the government is targeting to create around 2.5 lakh jobs in the agriculture and allied sectors.
He said, “In the NRLM, we created 1 lakh job opportunities for women in the last five years. These are registered jobs and now, we are targeting to create another one lakh jobs.”
He said in skills-based opportunities, the government is targeting 1.2 lakh positions and employ around 15% from there.
Sangma said under CM Elevate, the government expects a minimum of 50,000 jobs.
“We expect direct and indirect employment of almost 25,000 to be created in the IT sector,” he said.
He further said that 10,000 jobs will be created in government organisations on a contractual basis.
The Leader of Opposition asked the government to take note of the fact that many engineers and doctors decided to take up jobs not linked to their degree due to lack of employment opportunities in their field.