The Tamil Nadu government should introduce legislation mandating that private companies operating in the State provide 80% reservation for local residents, PMK youth wing president and Rajya Sabha member Anbumani Ramadoss has said.
In a statement on Tuesday, Dr. Anbumani noted that the Karnataka government had mandated that private companies receiving government support must allocate all the jobs in the ‘c’ and ‘d’ categories to the locals.
“While this may seem to propagate regionalism, such actions are necessary to protect the interests and the livelihood of the locals in the current day and age. It would be right to look at this issue through the lens of social justice, and the whole of India is moving towards such a structure,” he said.
Dr. Anbumani said some of the biggest manufacturing States in the country, excluding Tamil Nadu, were providing reservation in jobs for the locals. “In Andhra [Pradesh], a law has been formulated to provide 75% of the jobs in private firms to locals. In Telangana, though there is no such law, sops are being offered to companies that provide jobs to locals,” he said.
“In Telangana, there is 95% reservation for local residents in government jobs; Gujarat and Maharashtra have 80% reservation; Rajasthan, 75%; and Madhya Pradesh, 70%. The time has come for Tamil Nadu, which is regarded as a role model for social justice and is a leading manufacturing State, to mandate such a provision,” he added.
He said Tamil Nadu had more reasons than the other States to provide for such reservation, as in districts like Chennai, Coimbatore and Tiruppur, among others, people from other States had snatched jobs away from the locals in most private companies. “Due to these people taking away jobs from locals and other States having job reservation, a guarantee of jobs should be given to the locals,” he said.
Separately, PMK founder S. Ramadoss demanded that the Centre not reduce the funding for school education. “It is not right on the part of the Central government to reduce the Budget for school education by ₹3,000 crore. This would be wrong, considering the future of students. This will bring about wrong results,” Dr. Ramadoss said.
