the goan I network
PANAJI
Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Tuesday told the Goa assembly that the government was using coercive and incentive-linked methods to ensure private industry employs local manpower.
He said, 44 of the 169 projects granted approval by the Investment Promotion Board had already gone on-stream and some 2,749 have gained employment in these.
Responding to a question raised by Tivim MLA Nilkanth Halarnkar during Question Hour, Parrikar said it would not be prudent to take all the people of a locality into confidence where a industrial project is coming up.
“If that is the case than there will be no need of
the IPB,” Parrikar said in
response to Halarnkar’s question whether the government will take locals of the region into confidence in Colvale where an IPB-approved five-star hotel project is coming up.
“I cannot force investors to employ Goans by law. However we do it by imposing conditions such as domicile, knowledge of Konkani and also by incentives,” Parrikar said, to a supplementary by Halarnkar on whether locals will be employed in the project.
Halarnkar cautioned that labourers are brought by the bus loads from regions across the border like Banda and Dodamarg overlooking the claims of local youth.
The Chief Minister however said, that the government was incentivising employment of locals through salary subsidies of up to 50 percent.
“I can assure you that new industries hiring locals will benefit to the tune of up to 50 percent of their salary costs,” Parrikar said, but added that efforts will also have to be simultaneously made to ensure that Goan youth are made more competitive and employable.
He also said that it will not be viable for small scale units to bring in manpower from outside the State but in some large industries, it is the labour contractors who bring in people from outside.
“There are genuine issues with employing locals who want holidays for every silly reason like zatras and festivals. This is a serious problem in industries,” Parrikar said, adding that in competitive industries giving holidays or days off every now and then is not sustainable.
Opposition Leader, Chandrakant Kavlekar, sought to know whether the government had a full-proof mechanism to check the veracity of the claims made by these industries.
Parrikar said, the IPB had adopted ‘standard operating procedures’ to compare investment against land requirement and against employment potential, which is a time-tested formula.
