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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Job scheme ready for export by Cithara Paul

Job scheme ready for export by Cithara Paul

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published Published on Mar 15, 2010   modified Modified on Mar 15, 2010

Once India sold poverty to foreigners; now it’s being asked to export its top anti-poverty scheme.

Five foreign governments have asked the Centre to help them replicate the rural job scheme in their countries, officials have said.

South Africa was the first to have shown interest in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), India’s “cushion for poor people’’ in the words of the World Bank. The other four too are African nations: Egypt, Nigeria, Lesotho and Kenya.

South Africa’s minister of public works, Thoko Didiza, had mooted the idea in her country after her visit to India last year.

“I am impressed by the revolutionary employment model that guaranteed 100 days of work a year to every poor rural household,’’ Didiza had told the International Labour Organisation’s regional seminar in 2009.

A high-level Nigerian delegation led by Adewale Aribisala, chairman of the country’s House panel on millennium development goals, has met rural development minister C.P. Joshi with a similar intention.

A ministry official said Nigeria was impressed to see public works programmes being used to provide employment, especially to the rural population.

After the Nigerian team came the foreign minister of the kingdom of Lesotho, Mohlabi Kenneth Tsekoa. He now wants to send over a team of officials to gain hands-on experience of the rural job scheme.

The rural development ministry official said an Egyptian team too had come to study the scheme.

“South Africa wants to emulate the NREGA to consolidate its Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) and has sought our assistance,’’ he added. “South Africa wants to increase its reach and is keen on emulating our mode.”

Launched in July 2004, the EPWP is said to have created a million jobs so far using government funds, mostly on infrastructure and environmental schemes such as “work for water”. But Pretoria has found it a challenge to bring more people under the scheme and to prolong the duration of the work opportunities.

The United Nations Development Programme has recommendation to poor countries that they emulate the NREGA model. At a recent international summit, UNDP head Helen Clark described the scheme as an innovative programme and an amazing way to address rural poverty.

Clark, a former New Zealand Prime Minister, has toured various NREGA sites and said her organisation was willing to facilitate a sharing of ideas between India and other poor nations on the subject.


The Telegraph, 16 March, 2010, http://telegraphindia.com/1100316/jsp/nation/story_12221465.jsp
 

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