by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate Jobs, Employment, Government Jobs, News, Politics, Private Jobs
New Delhi : The Union Cabinet on Friday approved a special scheme for employment generation in the leather and footwear sector entailing expenditure of Rs 2,600 crore over three financial years up to 2019-20.
Briefing reporters here following the meeting, Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the special package for the employment generation in the leather and footwear sector is expected to generate around 3.24 lakh jobs in this period.
According to a Commerce Ministry release, the scheme “would lead to development of infrastructure for the leather sector, address environment concerns specific to the leather sector, facilitate additional investments, employment generation and increase in production”.
“Enhanced tax incentive would attract large scale investments in the sector and reform in labour law in view of seasonal nature of the sector will support economies of scale,” it added.
The “Indian Footwear, Leather and Accessories Development Programme” approved by the cabinet is made up of multiple components.
For instance, the human resource development sub-scheme proposes to provide assistance for placement-linked skill training to unemployed persons at Rs 15,000 per person, for skill upgradation training to employed workers at Rs 5,000 per employee and for training of trainers at Rs 2 lakh per person.
“The placement of 75 per cent of trained persons is proposed to be mandatory for availing assistance related to the skill development training component,” the statement said.
“The proposal under this sub-scheme is to train/skill 4.32 lakh unemployed persons, upgrade the skills of 75,000 existing employees and train 150 master trainers during the three years with proposed outlay of Rs 696 crore,” it added.
The Integrated Development of Leather Sector (IDLS) sub-scheme proposes to incentivise investment and manufacturing by providing investment grant or subsidy at 30 per cent of the cost of new plant and machinery to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and at 20 per cent of the cost of plant and machinery to other units for modernization in existing units as also for setting up new units.
“The proposal under this sub-scheme is to incentivize 1,000 units in the sector during the three years with proposed outlay of Rs 425 crore,” the Ministry said.
Another component proposes to provide assistance to the Footwear Design and Development Institute (FDDI) for upgradation of some of its existing campuses into centres of excellence and establishing 3 new skill centres.
The Mega Leather, Footwear and Accessories Cluster (MLFAC) sub-scheme aims at providing infrastructure support by setting up clusters.
“Graded assistance is proposed to be provided upto 50 per cent of the eligible project cost, excluding cost of land, with maximum government assistance being limited to Rs 125 crore. The outlay of Rs 360 crore has been proposed to support 3-4 new MLFACs,” the statement added.
Presenting the Union Budget earlier this year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that a special scheme would be launched to create employment in the leather and footwear sector.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
By Aparajita Gupta, New Delhi, (IANS) Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said he has an open mind on empowering the telecom watchdog to impose penalties on operators for call drops and poor service quality, but will await a formal request.
“If the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) approaches us in a structured manner about the legal architecture we will consider it with an open mind,” Prasad told IANS in an interview at his office in Sanchar Bhavan here.
He also made it clear that telecom operators could no longer hide behind the lack of spectrum, or infrastructure, as excuses for poor quality of service.
“I have cleared all the policies — spectrum trading, sharing, harmonisation, liberalisation and sharing of infrastructure both active and passive. Therefore, spectrum scarcity is no more the issue. It is time for them to give the results,” the minister said.
“I have taken note that they have installed 100,000 sites in the country over the last one year. But they need to do more,” he added.
The minister’s remarks come against the backdrop of the Supreme Court striking down the penalty on call drops proposed by the telecom watchdog, calling the move, as taken, to be ultra vires, arbitrary, unreasonable and non-transparent. It also found the action void of data or reason.
Earlier this week top officials at TRAI had said the government must enable the regulator to impose penalties in a legally-tenable manner. “We’re planning to write to the government on amendments in the TRAI Act. We should be empowered to impose penalties,” a TRAI official said.
During the free-wheeling interview, the minister said it was in the interests of operators to give good service. “If they can provide mobile phone services all over the country, they also need to give good service,” he said.
The minister said he has also referred complaints of “call masking” by operators to an expert team of the Department of Telecommunications. “I have told my department to look into this seriously on the technological front,” Prasad said.
After a call is placed, it should get automatically disconnected when a user moves to an area with poor network area. This qualifies as a “call drop” under the existing norms laid down by the regulator.
But there have been complaints that operators have been using what is called radio-link technology, by which such calls remain artificially connected — and continue to be billed — till the user physically terminates it.
And when such a call is disconnected, it does not get registered as a dropped call.
The minister said the next round of spectrum auction will be conducted soon in a transparent manner. “Since all the policies on spectrum is in place, we are going to put the highest ever quantity of spectrum for auction,” he said.
“More than 2,100 MHz. My job is only to create an enabling atmosphere in a transparent manner. Last time, it fetched Rs.1.10 lakh crore. The days of scandal and corruption in Sanchar Bhawan is over.”
It is expected that the next auction in the bands 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1,800 MHz, 2,100 MHz, 2,300 MHz and 2,500 MHz will fetch government a whopping Rs.560,000 crore, or $83 billion, payable over the tenure of the contract.
On the issue of net neutrality, the minister said the government was awaiting inputs from the watchdog. “My government is committed to non-discriminatory access for internet. Internet being one of the finest creations of human mind must be available for all, from global to local.”
The minister said the government was also focussed on accelerating electronic manufacturing in the country. “Our IT exports have crossed $108 billion. I am satisfied of the modest success in the last two years, which will lead to extraordinary growth in the next three years.”
(Aparajita Gupta can be reached at aparajita.g@ians.in)
