Govt working to reduce unemployment through policy decisions: Sangma

Sustained interventions and schemes are “already yielding results”, Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said in the assembly on Thursday, even as he rejected the opposition claims that government employment programmes had failed.
Replying to a query raised by opposition Trinamool Congress (TMC) legislator, Dr. Mizanur Kazi during the Question Hour in the assembly, Sangma said that the government has been proactively working to reduce unemployment through policy decisions and other interventions such as skilling, entrepreneurship support, including leveraging flow of investments in the state.
However, Kazi said that despite these interventions of the government, the unemployment rate is increasing in the state, while asking the Chief Minister if it was the failure of the policy initiatives of the government to curb the unemployment problem.
The Chief Minister, however, countered Kazi, and said, “To jump to a conclusion that policy is a failure would not be correct. If you look at surveys, they differ — 6.0 in 2022-23 and 6.2 in 2023-24 in the periodic labour force survey, and 3.1 in CMIE’s estimate. These are based on sample size and so the numbers vary.”
Moreover, Sangma also informed the assembly that 3.66 lakh jobs had been generated in recent years. “Maybe we have not yet fully fulfilled the goal, but it is a process and we are on the right track,” he said.
Noting that Meghalaya’s population is very much a young population compared to the other states in the country, the Chief Minister said, “We have 50 per cent of our population which is below the age of 20. So, these kinds of multiple challenges are there. I am not giving an excuse, but realising these challenges, we have realised the need to create more job avenues through different missions.”
Meanwhile, Sangma informed that the government had sanctioned Rs 140 crore to 22,500 producer groups, benefiting 2.1 lakh people under the FOCUS scheme, while FOCUS+ had reached another 1.5 lakh beneficiaries.
“Farmers have benefited. A lot of them have given testimonies that because of the money they got, their production has improved. We will ensure more impact in the future,” he added.
Sangma said the CM-Elevate, a flagship umbrella programme covering entrepreneurship, tourism, sports, wellness and other sectors.
“Within 20 days, we received 22,000 applications — so many that we had to close the portal temporarily. People can apply through the Meghalaya One portal,” he said.