Raking up another issue after Adarsh and Ordinance on convicted lawmakers, Union minister Milind Deora has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking replacement of MPLADS scheme with a new programme to provide skill training and employability to people.
Deora's earlier remarks on Adarsh scam and the Ordinance had preceded Rahul Gandhi's decisive interventions on these issues giving an impression that he had raised them after the green signal from the party high command or at least he could read the mind of the leadership, a contention which he had sought to downplay saying he was no weatherman.
In a letter sent to the Prime Minister yesterday, Deora said the money sanctioned under MPLADS scheme right now can be used for infrastructure related projects in one's constituency while the demand for jobs and skills are the top most priority for people in the constituency of an MP.
"Rs 5 cr/MP/year for constituency infra can be used better," he wrote on social networking site twitter today, giving a link of his letter.
In the letter, Deora has requested the Prime Minister to consider a proposal in the Cabinet to streamline the MPLADS scheme or if that is not administratively feasible, to "replace MPLADS with a new scheme" to allow funds to be provided for skill training and employability of youth in each Parliamentary constituency.
"Each MP can then direct his/her constituents seeking skills and jobs to this initiative and help mobilise youth from their constituency for training and employment. These funds can be directly provided to students upon completion of training and certification in each constituency, thereby removing the potential of misuse...," he said.
He added, "With this we can move away from funds provided to MPs for hard infrastructure projects in constituency to the more important soft infrastructure of skilling and employability, which can have a larger and longer impact on the country."
Deora said that this will also help the country reap the often talked about demographic dividend in the country, paving the way for a more skilled workforce and a productive economy.
"I sincerely hope you will consider my proposal in earnest and help make it a reality," he said.
