New job schemes to kick off soon: Somanathan

VIKAS DHOOT

 

NEW DELHI

The government is confident of launching the schemes in the Prime Minister’s package for employment and skilling, which were announced in last week’s Budget, within this financial year. That includes the internship programme for one crore youth in 500 top companies, whose design details will be worked out in consultation with the industry, Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan said.

“We expect all of these schemes to start off within this financial year… We have tried to make sure the coverage of the employment-linked incentive schemes is, as far as possible, widespread, and not tried to make technological, sectoral choices. While Scheme A and C are for all industries, Scheme B is for manufacturing jobs,” Mr. Somanathan told The Hindu.

He also said that the decision to incentivise hiring for first-timers with a salary limit of ₹1 lakh per month was aimed at keeping the schemes sector-neutral.

“I agree ₹1 lakh is high, but it is not so if you are trying to cover the hiring of people with sophisticated skills, or knowledge of AI [Artificial Intelligence],” he said, adding that the schemes could spur new jobs in areas under threat from the advent of technologies like AI.

Referring to the recent tendency of large tech companies to defer joining dates for fresh recruits, the Secretary said that it was precisely for this reason that the government did not want to exclude such people.

“We don’t want to leave out the services or any sector from possible incentivisation if it will create jobs. We don’t want to focus only on employees who draw up to ₹25,000 a month. You can pay the employee even one lakh, but our fiscal outgo is limited to the ₹25,000 level, but even 24% of that works out to 12% of a ₹50,000 salary, which is still a substantial subsidy,” he emphasised

“We don’t know where these salary figures stop. In some of these industries, even fresh hires get more than ₹50,000 to ₹60,000. But we have capped our outgo so the incentive is strongest for those earning ₹25,000,” the official noted.

‘Nothing to lose’

The new scheme to facilitate internships for youth in the age bracket of 21 to 24 years has no connection with the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana 4.0 announced in the Union Budget for 2023-24, and will be administered by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, not the Ministry of Skill Development, Mr. Somanathan underlined.

He stressed that the scheme is voluntary and will not require firms to invest funds from their own pockets, but rather through their mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) spends, combined with government resources.

“We are also open to the company doing the skilling through companies in the backward or forward supply chains, if they can’t do it themselves,” Mr. Somanathan underlined.

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