The Hindu : National : Enact law to protect jobs, says Yechury

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Enact law to protect jobs, says Yechury

M. Rajeev

HYDERABAD: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has demanded that the Centre enact a legislation to protect jobs of employees in the private sector, including those in Information Technology and Services who are facing the threat of retrenchment due to the economic recession.

The CPI(M) wanted the Centre to invoke provisions of the Contract Labour Law imposing penalties on the companies wherever there are violations and asked the government to introduce the Bill for protecting jobs in the ensuing session of Parliament.

“The government, which is keen on pushing through the Bill on foreign direct investments in the insurance sector, should take steps to protect the existing jobs if it cannot create new ones. People and their security are more important than economic liberalisation,” CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.

Mr. Yechury, who was here on Sunday, told reporters that the statistics presented by the Reserve Bank of India, the Planning Commission and other agencies projected the growth rate to be around 7 per cent and this could decline further before the end of the fiscal. The government had, no doubt, announced a financial stimulus of Rs. 20,000 crore but it would not be sufficient to minimise the impact of recession on the economy.

The package should be enhanced to Rs.1 lakh crore and investments should be made in social infrastructure like roads and railways.

“The crisis arose because of the wrong diagnosis and wrong prescription. There is a need for rectification.”

On the political front, he said the Left parties were working for a “secular non-Congress alternative” at the Centre with an alternative policy direction. Accordingly, the Left was looking at parties that support economic policies laying emphasis on ‘people before corporates,’ unflinching stand against communalism unlike the “vacillating Congress” and independent foreign policy where “we will not be an appendage” to the United States.

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