Facing criticism for jobless growth, as many as 1.1 crore jobs were lost in 2018 alone, Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday called for accurate data collection on employment and skilling.
According to recent CMIE data instead of creating jobs a whopping 1.1 crore jobs were lost in 2018 alone, which the report blamed to be after effects of the November 2016 note ban and GST roll-out in July 2017. Both these measures led to millions of job losses and closure of over a million small industrial units. It can be recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi rode to power in 2014 summer elections promising one crore jobs to the youth every year. Available data are not inclusive and does not cover many sectors and many new age industries like taxi aggregators who are reportedly engaging a million people today, Goyal said at an event here organised by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Wrong and delayed data can create havoc and can result in wrong planning, he added. Skilling after accurate data collection is very important in order to develop robust models on the lines of those followed internationally, like Singapore and Germany, Goyal said. “We have been engaging with industry to understand the disconnect between the available data and the real situations. Therefore, to get an accurate picture we were having an engagement with business and industry, both traditional and new age,” he said.
Goyal emphasised the need for focusing on sectors like tourism, health care and transportation which has the potential to create huge job opportunities in the country.
“Let’s focus on sectors like tourism, health care and transportation sectors that has tremendous potential to generate employment. With Ayushman Bharat we expect that the health care sector will need many professional in the related with the sector,” the minister said addressing the workshop on ‘Jobs and Livelihoods’, he said.
The Minister said women should be encouraged to develop livelihood in the changing landscape of jobs and opportunities. Further, Goyal said, a lot of business and entrepreneurs opined that the country lack the right skill set needed for employment.
“We discussed relationship between education and skilling. On how to make skilling programme more robust and sustainable so that one can utilise the available capacity for skilling and also expand the ‘on the job’ skilling through apprenticeship and other models,” he added. The Government, he said, is also looking at encouraging more start-ups to generate employment. “The entrepreneurial spirit of the country and Indians is the way forward, particularly with the changing world,” he added.