Hyderabad: Unemployed youth in Telangana will have to wait a bit longer to start receiving an unemployment allowance of Rs 3,016 per month from the state government.
With the election code coming into force from February 11, thanks to the Election Commission issuing schedule for MLC elections for two graduates’ constituencies, the chances of Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao making an announcement on this scheme is ruled out until March 22, when election code will end.
Meanwhile, the finance department has initiated a process to draft a State Budget for 2021-22, in which it has proposed to allot a token amount of Rs 1,000 crore for “unemployment allowance.”
Official sources in the finance department said that since the Chief Minister cannot make any announcement on extending unemployment allowance due to election code, it will be mentioned in the budget.
IT minister and TRS working president KT Rama Rao had on January 28 announced that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will make an announcement on extending unemployment allowance in a day or two.
However, the sanctioning of only Rs 1,000 crore shows that the government may not be able to implement the scheme, which remains a key poll promise of TRS during 2018 Assembly polls which has not yet been fulfilled, in the fiscal 2021-22. It could not be implemented even in the first two years of the new government assuming office due to fund crunch.
In the vote on account for 2019-20 tabled by the Chief Minister in February 2019, the government allotted Rs 11,810 crore towards unemployment allowance. However, the scheme could not be formulated. The Coronavirus pandemic further compounded the financial woes of the state government.
In this backdrop, the government wants to allot a token amount of Rs 1,000 crore for the scheme in the upcoming budget but give the allowance to unemployed only in FY 2022-23.
Another issue bothering officials is lack of clarity on who should be considered as “unemployed”. Therefore, there is no clarity on the number of unemployed in the state.
Chief Minister Rao is likely to appoint a panel of senior IAS officials to formulate the scheme and its guidelines by 2022-23.
Nearly 10 lakh candidates have registered with employment exchanges of the state government. Over 20 lakh candidates have registered with the Telangana State Public Service Commission (TSPSC) for government jobs.
Even if unemployed youth are estimated at 10 lakh, the government will have to earmark Rs 3,600 crore per year to cover all of them. Some sections of the unemployed are already demanding that the scheme be implemented with retrospective effect from December 2018.
There is already an ongoing war of words going on between the government and opposition over the former’s claim on jobs provided during the last six years.
Rama Rao as IT and industries minister claimed that 1.31 lakh people were recruited since 2014, including 36,000 youth recruited through the TSPSC. He further claimed that 14.50 lakh job opportunities were provided to youth through 14,000 companies, given permissions under TSiPASS, the flagship industrial policy, under which, new industries are given all permissions within 14 days of an online application.
