Social sector activists on Wednesday urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to consider more measures for job creation and enhance the social security benefits under the Employees’ Pension Scheme as well as more funds for Right to Education and health and nutrition.

“The Finance Minister agreed with the demand by stakeholders that administrative ministries should release funds for welfare schemes on priority to beneficiaries,” said an official release after the pre-Budget meeting with social sector representatives.

Along with senior Finance Ministry officials including Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, the meeting was also attended by Rakesh Srivastava, Secretary, Women and Child Development, and Kalpana, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Labour and Employment.

“The unorganised workers should be provided with adequate social security coverage for which a budgetary allocation of ₹20,000 crore must be provided in this Budget,” said the Trade Union Coordination Centre.

Stressing that the rate of GDP growth and employment generation must be in tandem, Vrijesh Upadhyay, General Secretary, BMS, said, “The government should encourage and give more incentive to labour-intensive industries.”

Child welfare, nutrition

The Finance Ministry said that it also received representations for greater allocation of funds for child protection schemes; concerns over nutrition security, more targeted benchmarks to improve quality of government funded schools, healthcare for the elderly and improved conditions for working mothers.

The representatives from the social sector included Bina Pallical, Director, Economic Rights, National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights; Sree Harica, Programme Director, Mines Minerals and People; Kavita Srivastava, Convenor, Right to Food Campaign; Rukmini Banerjee, CEO, Pratham; Mirai Chatterjee, Director of Social Security, SEWA; and Mathew Cherian, CEO, Helpage India.

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