Now, Left targets govt on jobs Act

Intensifying its attack on the Congress-led UPA government, the CPI (M) today accused it of violating the national common minimum programme (NCMP) on the issue of employment generation.

According to party MP Chittabrata Majumdar, the programme talked about a national employment guarantee Act but what has been enacted is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

"The urban poor and lower middle class have been left out. The Act did not cover the entire rural poor and the lower middle class. Only 200 districts in the country have been selected for this scheme," Majumdar has written in the latest issue of the party organ, People's Democracy.

He said while the NREG scheme had been launched with a Rs 10,170 crore outlay, the outlay for Sampoorna Gramin Rojgar Yojana (SGRY) has been slashed by Rs 4,950 crore.

Moreover, the Food for Work Programme, which spent Rs 4,050 crore last year, has been wound up and merged into the NREG, he added. "Thus even while an amount of Rs 10,170 crore has been allocated for the NREG, a whopping Rs 9,000 crore has simultaneously been slashed," the CPI(M) leader said.

With the ongoing Assembly elections in mind, the MP re-visited Budget 2006-07 and criticised the UPA regime for "anti-people policies".

"The finance minister, in his Budget, put forward the argument for targeted subsidies , particularly relating to essential commodities and inputs like food, fertiliser, etc," he said.

This comes at a time of rising starvation deaths and suicides by destitute farmers across the country, Majumdar said. And more so when the Budget is totally silent on reduction of subsidies to the corporate sector, both domestic and foreign, in the name of incentives, tax holidays and tariff concessions on utilities, he added.

"The Budget, by such proposals, has once again re-iterated the government's intention of cutting the expenditure for the common man," the CPI (M) leader said.