PANJIM: The Congress on Thursday stated that only 55 Goans out of 8,073 employees are employed in various industrial units across the State as against 41,627 of the proposed employment.
Reacting to the Investment Promotion Board and Facilitation (IPB) approving various projects with employment potential, Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) President Amit Patkar charged that the IPB had turned out to be a money-making mechanism for the State government.
The statement made by Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Wednesday that the IPB approved 10 projects with 3.495 jobs was one more ‘jumla’ in the series of many ‘jumlas’ announced by both the governments -- Centre and the State.
Producing a reply to an Assembly question tabled on July 21 last year, revealed that 228 projects were granted in-principal approval with investment of Rs 16,874.32 crore out of which 76 projects had been completed from 2014 till 2022.
In the annexure to the said reply, the Industries Minister clearly stated actual employment number was 8,073 -- 19.3 per cent as against 41,627 of the proposed employment, out of which only 55 were Goans, Patkar said. In the reply to another question dated January 19, 2023, the government had stated that the IPB had started to collect data of employment of Goans and non-Goan employees by early 2021.
Incidentally, by another written reply tabled on March 31, 2023, the government replied that, “Goa IPB does not maintain details of names, addresses, age, qualification and designation of the persons employed, their date of appointment and current status of the job.” What changed between January 2023 and March 2023 for the government to stop collecting data of Goans and non-Goans working in IPB approved projects? Patkar demanded to know.
The GPCC president said that it is evident from the fact that the government has deleted the column of ‘Actual Employment’ from the annexures provided to both, starred and unstarred questions answered on March 31, 2023. The actual employment column was there in the annexure given with a reply answered on July 21, 2022.