KCR to hold crucial meet on pandemic, jobs

Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao will be holding a high-level meeting with all District Collectors and agricultural officials at Pragati Bhavan on June 16.

The Chief Minister is likely to discuss the ground situation and the success rate in controlling coronavirus in each district. This interaction is in a way preparatory one for the Prime Minister's video conference on June 17. This meeting gains importance since the Centre, of late, has been targeting the State that it had not been conducting enough number of Covid tests leading to a vague picture of the situation. Even the national media has been ripping apart the State government for the way it was handling the pandemic. Hence, the Chief Minister is likely to present a factsheet on how the cases have been increasing in other States, including Andhra Pradesh though they have been claiming to have conducted more number of tests.

Another important issue that would come up for discussion would be regarding job crisis particularly in the rural Telangana in the lockdown period and work out a strategy to address the impending unemployment at grassroot level by linking the farm-related works with Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA).

In the daylong meeting, the Chief Minister will put specific target before each Collector on the implementation of the linking of the agriculture-related works with employment guarantee scheme ensuring jobless workers get some relief in the lockdown period. Lakhs of workers returned to their native places from different States after they lost livelihoods due to the lockdown since March.

"The government has already compiled the data of jobless workers in villages. Unemployment crisis is expected to blow up if the lockdown continued for another two months," said an official. The CM will take some crucial decisions regarding creation of jobs to daily-wage workers for more number of days. Currently, the government is offering 200 days of work to the jobless, he said.

The Collectors were asked to submit a report on the status of implementation of regulated farming in the meeting. The challenges facing in convincing the farmers to shift to other crops and the inclusion of new beneficiaries under the Rythu Bandhu scheme will also be discussed in detail in the meeting. Haritha Haaram works are likely to be included under MNREGA programme and a decision in this regard will be taken in the meeting.