Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan on June 20 to offer immediate employment opportunities to migrant workers who have returned to their villages because of the coronavirus ( COVID-19 ) lockdown, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday.
Out of an estimated 1 crore migrant workers who have returned to their villages, 67 lakh workers are expected to benefit from this scheme, a senior government official told The Hindu.
Lockdown displaces lakhs of migrants
At a press conference here, she said 116 districts across six States had been identified as those having the highest number of workers returning home after the lockdown . Public works worth ₹50,000 crore would be carried out in these districts to provide immediate relief to these workers.
Mr. Modi will launch this scheme through video-conference from Telihar village in Khagaria district of Bihar, where the Assembly election is due later this year. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi will join the event.
Apart from Bihar, other States that have been seen a rush of migrant workers returning are Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Rajasthan. The Chief Ministers of these States and the Union Ministers of the Ministries concerned will also take part at the launch of the scheme.
“The Central and State governments have very meticulously mapped the skill sets of the migrant workers who have returned in large numbers to the 116 districts in 6 States,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
Workers will be employed in rural housing, rural connectivity including the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, national highways, railway works, community sanitation complex, gram panchayats, anganwadis, water conservation, digging of wells, plantation and horticulture. “Within 125 days, for 116 districts, nearly 25 schemes of the government will be brought together under the Garib Kalyan Rojgar Abhiyan. We will reach saturation levels for each of those schemes within those 125 days,” Ms. Sitharaman said.
The Finance Minister said each of the 116 districts had a minimum of 25,000 migrant workers, but the number varied from district to district. A case in point was Siddharthnagar in Uttar Pradesh that, she said, was having 1.61 lakh workers.
Asked whether the scheme could be extended beyond 125 days, she said: “The priority is to deal with the immediate requirements and we are giving a clear blue print for the next four months. As we go along, we will have to see how many of them are going to stay back in villages and how many of them would want to return where they were working.”
The scheme will see a coordination between 12 different Ministries/ Departments, such as Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Road Transport and Highways, Mines, Drinking Water and Sanitation, Environment, Railways, Petroleum and Natural Gas, New and Renewable Energy, Border Roads, Telecom and Agriculture.
“This campaign of 125 days, which will work in a mission mode, will involve intensified and focussed implementation of 25 different types of works to provide employment to the migrant workers on the one hand and create infrastructure in the rural regions of the country on the other, with a resource envelope of ₹50,000 crore,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said.
“The villages across 116 districts in the six States will join this programme through the Common Service Centres and Krishi Vigyan Kendras, maintaining the norms of social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” the statement said.
