The Hindu : Front Page : Employed receive unemployed relief assistance

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 24, 2007
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Employed receive unemployed relief assistance

Karthik Madhavan

ERODE: Scene 1: Boards outside most industrial, garment manufacturing and weaving units in Erode announce the want of labour. Of these, garment units alone require a good number. “At present we require 10,000 skilled and unskilled labourers and in a few months from now the number will exceed 25,000,” says S. Sivananthan, secretary, Textiles and Garments Exporters’ Association.

Scene 2: At the District Employment Office (DEO), Erode, more than 6,500 persons draw unemployment relief assistance, a Tamil Nadu Government scheme to help educated unemployed youth.

The contrast, it appears, cannot be any clearer. At one end there is labour shortage and at the other there are beneficiaries, who citing unemployed status, get relief assistance.

DEO statistics say 749 men and 1,502 women with secondary school, 1,139 men and 2,339 women with higher secondary and 327 men and 666 women with degree and above qualifications draw the assistance.

The office pays them Rs. 32.07 lakh every three months by depositing the amount Rs. 150, 200 and 300 for those with SSLC, HSC and degree and above qualifications respectively in bank accounts.

To get the assistance the unemployed have to declare, among other things, that they are neither employed in any Government or private organisations, self-employed nor getting any other financial assistance. They give such a declaration in writing, attested by Government officers.

In Erode town, The Hindu met three such beneficiaries, all of who were either employed or self-employed. Take for example K. Pandurangan (name changed). A bachelor in business management, he is employed in a private establishment for the past 12 months and has been receiving the assistance as well. Likewise, P. Vignesh (name changed), a bachelors in economics, has been receiving the assistance for the past six months, despite running a footwear manufacturing unit. His friend P.M. Kumar (again, name changed) too is in a footwear unit and has been receiving the assistance.

N. Periasamy, Erode district secretary of the Communist Party of India, says those seeking the assistance are not employed in the real sense. “Their job is temporary. There is no job security either,” he argues.

There is no discrepancy whatsoever, he maintains.

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