Uttarakhand has not yet felt the pinch of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP), with the exception of the construction industry and manufacturers of construction materials.
Various industrial associations said that a labour shortage of nearly 10 per cent has been created in the hill state in the wake of the NREGP. However, this shortfall is not yet being seen as a major problem.
Although official statistics on the subject are not available, industrial sources said the problem is becoming severe in the construction industry. Construction companies that are building houses and flats are facing a big labour shortage, since workers are now getting jobs in their villages. Industries that manufacture construction materials are also feeling the heat.
Significantly, manufacturing units in industrial areas like Selaquie, Haridwar and Pantnagar, which witnessed an industrial boom in the past four years, have not faced a problem so far. “There may be a problem at one or two industries. But it has not become a big issue so far,” said V K Dhawan, owner of an industrial estate at Selaquie, where nearly 30 small units are operating.
Dhawan, who is a former head of the Uttarakhand unit of the Confederation of Indian Industry, said there was also no labour shortage at his factory in the Mohabewala industrial area in Dehradun.
But Pankaj Gupta, president of the Industries Association of Uttarakhand (IAU) held a different view. Gupta said workers who were working in peripheral activities were not readily available now. Gupta also agreed that a 10 per cent shortfall in labour supply had been noticed in the state and cautioned that the problem could get severe in the days to come.
The government on the other hand maintains that the NREGP was very successful in the state, and that all those who had registered under the scheme were given employment this year. In the year 2008-09, nearly 84,970 people out of a total of 86,768 obtained work — a success rate of 97.93 percent, official statistics show.
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“This scheme has in a way started stemming the tide of migration of people, especially in the hills. So industries would suffer due to this trend,” said S S Tomar, joint director (Rural Development), who is closely associated with the NREGP in the hill state.
However, Tomar admitted that no official data was available on workers who may have quit industrial employment to take up work in their villages.