Employment growth dipping, says Kharge

 The Centre on Wednesday admitted that the recent trends had shown a slackening growth in employment and a significant rise in the number of casual workers.
Citing official reports, labour and employment minister Mallikarjun Kharge said casualisation of labour had increased and the proportion of the organised sector in total employment had declined steadily.

To help both job seekers and employers, a national web portal that will serve as a virtual job market would be developed, the minister said.
“The portal will contain all relevant information on the availability of skilled persons and requirements of industries,” he said while inaugurating a ‘National Seminar on Report to the People on Employment’ here.

The seminar was organised by the ministry of labour and employment in collaboration with the International Labour Organisation, to elicit the views and suggestions of experts as well as various stakeholders in the area of employment.

Kharge said while the major growth area of employment was in the service sector, it had slackened in the primary sector. Stating that around 94 per cent of the workforce in the country was engaged in the unorganised sector, he said the challenging task was to improve the conditions of work in the informal economy and contract labour.
“What is actually required is transforming the informal sector from a storehouse of average quality jobs to a reservoir of productive jobs,” the minister said.

He said the generation of employment required a multi-sectoral and multi-pronged approach, which might include creation of better wages and wider avenues of assured self-employment.

Balancing concerns

Focussing on the need for balancing the concerns of competitiveness of enterprises with employment generation, Kharge said the rights of labour for decent working and living standards should be protected.

The labour and employment minister also informed that modernisation and upgrading of employment exchanges throughout the country had been taken up under the Mission Mode Projects in the National e-Governance Plan.

This would help in providing speedy access to employment service-related information to job seekers and employers.

President Pratibha Patil, in her address to the joint session of Parliament earlier this year, had announced that the Centre would initiate action to bring out five reports on education, health, employment, environment and infrastructure within the first 100 days of the new UPA government at the Centre.
The ministry of labour and employment has been entrusted with the responsibility of preparing the report on employment.