Apart from providing crucial employment opportunities, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MNREGS) is an excellent platform of gender equality.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma making the observation today at a regional conference on women’s empowerment said MNREGS does not make any discrimination between men and women when it comes to wage allotment.
“MNREGS does not make any discrimination and equal wages is given to both men and women, it was formed on the fundamentals of gender equality,” he told the gathering. The scheme, he said, is empowering women economically in a substantial manner.
MNREGS was enacted as an Act by the Parliament in 2005 and provides 100 days of work to an adult member of a family in a calendar year. The Act provides equal wage to both men and women who undertake unskilled manual labour for building public works.
Sangma said, the government wants to partner with the people in developmental projects and women have been found to be “willing partners” than men on several occasions.
Citing the example of the government Institute of Entrepreneurship, Sangma said, 80 percent of those who enrolled in these institutions at the Community and Rural Development blocks were women. “Women are constantly searching for ways of economic development and they need to be encouraged and their skills and financial literacy upscaled,” he said.
Moreover, a woman who is economically independent is not only capable of providing economic stability to her own family but is also capable of creating a chain link in a multi – dimensional way for the much needed socio economic transformation of the society.
Stating the government has the responsibility, therefore, to frame policies and projects that are non-discriminatory so that people are empowered socio-economically equally. All the programmes of the government are gender sensitive for all round development of the state, the Chief Minister said.
No comments:
Post a Comment