Mt Abu admn starts 15-day job scheme for the needy

Jodhpur: The administration of the state’s only hill station and prominent tourist destination, Mount Abu, has struck upon a unique model for providing employment to those who lost jobs due to the lockdown and that too without causing any burden to the state exchequer.

Under this model, a person from one such family has been picked by the municipal council to provide employment in forest department and in the municipal corporation.

A target of providing jobs to 600-700 affected families for a month in two phases of 15 days each has been kept.

Mount Abu municipal council chief Jitendra Vyas said the first batch of 329 workers completed its schedule of 15 days’ job on Friday. The next batch of 340 workers will begin work from Saturday for the next 15 days.

The idea had been shared by SDM Ravindra Goswami at a meeting of the Abu Paryavaran Samiti held on April 27 considering the condition of petty workers who were dependent on tourism and were rendered jobless due to lockdown.

It was estimated that 700 such families across 25 wards have been affected due to loss of jobs, which included those working in hotels and restaurants, photographers, boat operators and attendants, lorry and cart operators, swing operators, sellers of various objects and eatables. “The fund was not an issue as we decided to pay these workers the minimum wages as per government rules from the samiti collected from vehicles entry fees at the checkposts,” he said. The first list was prepared with the help of councillors with a condition that 12 persons including 5 women and 7 men would be selected from each ward who will be provided employment for 15 days with a view to cover all the families.

Vyas said being a tourist destination, cleanliness was of utmost importance and considering the zero footfall, we considered it to be a befitting time to do this. So with Goswami’s idea, it was decided that 50% of the workforce will be given to the forest department and rest 50% would be managed by municipal council. Work at forest department included cleaning while municipal works included cleaning of nullahs, roads, etc.