The Labour Bureau’s survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (Mudra) scheme will not be made public for another two months making this the third report on employment to be kept under wraps before the elections.
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New Delhi: The Labour Bureau’s survey on the number of jobs created under the Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency (Mudra) scheme will not be made public for another two months making this the third report on employment to be kept under wraps before the elections, Indian Express reported on Thursday.
“The number of jobs created under the Mudra scheme will be released after the polls as the Expert Committee found anomalies in the methodology used by the Bureau in arriving at the findings,” sources said.
The multi-phase elections will start on April 11, with the counting of votes scheduled for May 23.
The Prime Minister Mudra Loan Yojana, the government’s flagship job creation programme, helps small businesses get a credit of Rs 50,000 to Rs 10 lakh from private and public sector banks, micro-finance institutions and other lending institutions.
Besides this survey, the government has not made public, the National Sample Survey Office’s periodic Labour Force Survey Report for 2017-’18, which found the unemployment rate in India at a 45-year high of 6.1% in 2017-’18. The government also reportedly failed to release the Labour Bureau’s sixth annual employment-unemployment survey, which showed that unemployment touched a four-year high of 3.9% in 2016-’17.
The Labour Bureau’s Mudra survey has hit a roadblock. According to the Indian Express, the expert’s committee asked the bureau to “reconcile some errors” at a meeting on Friday. The Labour Bureau asked for two months to do that – which means the results will not be public before the upcoming elections.
In February, the NITI Aayog had reportedly asked the labour minister to process the Mudra survey and present its findings on February 27. The survey looks at one lakh Mudra scheme beneficiaries between April 2015 and January 31, 2019.
In May last year, The Wire had reported on how the Mudra scheme may not be the large-scale job creator it was being floated as. The number of larger-sized loans – of more than Rs 5 lakh – that can create real jobs were just a tiny percentage, or 1.3%, of total loans disbursed under the scheme, an RTI query had revealed.
The code of conduct came into effect on March 10 after the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.