Kolkata: The robust economic strategy of the Mamata Banerjee government to tackle COVID-19 situation and aftermath of Super Cyclone Amphan has ensured a far better position of Bengal with 6.5 per cent unemployment rate compared to that of the country's at 11 per cent in June.
Most importantly, Bengal's unemployment rate is less than 18 states and Union Territories in the month of June.
Bengal is also far ahead of the BJP-run states, including Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, in providing employment as the unemployment rates of the two saffron party-led states stands at 9.6 percent and 33.6 percent respectively as per the data revealed by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE).
In this connection, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted on Saturday: "We have implemented a robust economic strategy to tackle COVID-19 and the devastation caused by Amphan. Proof lies in West Bengal's unemployment rate for the month of June 2020 which stands at 6.5 percent, far better than that of India at 11%, Uttar Pradesh at 9.6 percent and Haryana at 33.6 percent, as per CMIE."
When people returned to their respective states leaving their jobs in the wake of the pandemic, unemployment had come up as a major challenge before all the state governments. In such a situation, Banerjee had come up with a series of steps to provide jobs to those who returned to Bengal besides tackling the situation to check the spread of the
virus.
She had given a call to impose lockdown with a humane face and relaxations were given accordingly to ensure people earn their livelihood by maintaining the norms of physical distancing. Creation of eight crore man-days under MGNREGA scheme has also helped in bringing down the rate of unemployment to 6.5 percent in June.
Retweeting the Chief Minister's tweet, state Finance minister Amit Mitra maintained in a tweet that "consistently achieving every month" as the figure in May was 17.41 per cent and the same has come down by 10.91 per cent in
June.
The unemployment rate in another BJP-run state, Tripura, is 21.3 per cent. In Madhya Pradesh, the figure stands at 8.2 per cent. The only
Left-run state Kerala records an unemployment rate of 20.1 percent. Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand record unemployment rate at 19.5 percent, 14.4 percent and 21 per cent respectively.