BHOPAL: Activists and non-governmental organisations participating in the ongoing Rojgar Adhikar Yatra, which reached here on Friday, have demanded that a universal employment guarantee act be passed with basic safeguards.

They termed the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, which has been tabled in Parliament, discriminatory. They said it lacked the safeguards and provisions essential for universal employment guarantee.

The Rojgar Adhikar Yatra (journey for the cause of employment guarantee), demanding the right to work and minimum economic wages, reached here on Friday after starting from Delhi. On its way, it covered more than 2000 km of some of the most backward districts of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a Jawaharlal University professor and member of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, told newspersons here on Friday that the purpose behind the Yatra was to seek the people's mandate and build a consensus on the issue of employment guarantee. He said that the problem of unemployment had acquired grim proportions and that in rural areas unemployment increased at the annual rate of 5.3 per cent whereas the availability of food decreased at the rate of 12.3 per cent.

Prof. Chenoy said it was strange that official figures regularly showed a progressive decline in the number of people living below the poverty line (BPL). A genuine survey would reveal that almost 74 per cent people in rural areas actually fall in the BPL category.

Since a large part of the economically deprived rural populace had not been included in the BPL category and since only 150 districts were proposed to be covered under the Rural Employment Guarantee Bill, it was obvious that the UPA Government had diluted its stand on employment guarantee and had deviated from its common minimum programme, Prof. Chenoy said. Employment should be available to all, including those evicted from their land due to the building of dams.

While stressing that there should be a law for minimum wages, he said every member of a family should be given employment.

Jean Dreze of the Delhi School of Economics said everyone had the right to live with dignity. Prof. Dreze said: "It seems the Government lacks the will to properly implement the Food for Work Programme." He said a closer look at the implementation of Government programmes in some parts of Madhya Pradesh revealed a paucity of basic safeguards, a total lack of transparency and missing muster rolls. In Badwani district, it was found that the workers demanding minimum wages were also being denied work.

Getting delayed

The participants said the Employment Bill, referred to the Standing Committee of Parliament, was getting delayed since the committee, headed by senior BJP leader Kalyan Singh, had not met in the last six months. The Employment Guarantee Act should not be discriminatory and it should be enforced simultaneously all over the country within a fixed time frame, they said.

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