Voicing concern over American President Donald Trump’s attempts to impose restrictions on H-1B visas, Andhra Pradesh (A.P.) Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu said the U.S. had plunged into chaos as a consequence of the protectionist policy.
“Mr. Trump set an example of how an individual can damage a country. There are agitations all around and the whole of U.S. is under turmoil,” Mr. Naidu said, hinting at the likely impact of the proposed conditions on non-immigrant visas on Indian IT professionals.
Addressing Mandal Education Officers (MEOs) and headmasters from 13 districts at the ALC auditorium here on Sunday, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu said one out of every four software employees in the world was an Indian and the way Mr. Trump had sought to limit the H-1B visas and tried to clamp down on immigrant workers in other forms was not good for his own country.
“Mr. Trump’s policy [on H-1B visas] is a shocker for the global workforce. It is through such actions that the prestige of countries is lowered,” Mr. Naidu observed.
Coming to the education sector of A.P., Mr. Naidu said the Government had made the highest allocation ever of ₹21,500 crore to the department in last year’s budget and was fulfilling the wishes of the teachers in a phased manner as all things could not be done overnight due to financial constraints.
He said it was the TDP Government that gave 43% fitment to the teachers, raised the retirement age to 60, filled MEO posts and increased the child care leave to 60 days.
The CM said the combined service rules were in the offing and teacher posts would be filled every year through the DSC examination before May. The long-pending issues of the municipal teachers were sorted out recently, he said, and called for the teachers’ cooperation for transforming the State into a knowledge hub while promising that all issues including that of contract teachers would be solved sooner or later.
Mr. Naidu stressed on the need to promote population growth in the country to continue to reap the demographic dividend.
“Our focus was on population control but we have to promote its ‘growth’ now. Population in China, Japan and the European countries is coming down. Conscious efforts by their governments to increase the population have failed.”
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