East Midnapore leads in providing work under ‘Karmashree’ scheme

Kolkata: East Midnapore district has been the frontrunner among the districts in providing employment under the ‘Karmashree’ scheme conceived by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the backdrop of the Centre stopping payment of wages to workers in Bengal since December 2022.

Since April 1 this year, till date, the state has disbursed payment of Rs 325 crore as wages to workers under Karmashree in East Midnapore with over 3.35 lakh workers engaged under the scheme. Over 1.46 crore mandays have been created during this period. 23,247 schemes have been initiated by the district administration and 44 days work has been provided to the job card holders.

The work that has been done under Karmashree includes road construction and repair under Pathasree, setting up of health centres and ICDS centres, making of school uniforms, mid day meal related work etc to mention a few.

The district has witnessed great success under Karmashree when it comes to setting up of ICDS centres with the highest number of 600 odd centres coming up in the district. Presently, work under Pathasree scheme is going on in the district by engaging job card holders. The demand for construction and repair of such roads were placed through calls in ‘Sarasari Mukhyomantri’ helpline number.

Nadia and South 24-Parganas are in the second and third position when it comes to providing work to job card holders under Karmashree.

It was on March 12 when Banerjee made the official launch of Karmashree project through which the job card holders in the state would be guaranteed 50 days work and payment for their toil through convergence of various government departments from a public distribution programme at Habra in North 24-Parganas.

Before the Lok Sabha elections, the state government through its own exchequer cleared the pending dues of 59 lakh job card holders who were denied their due wages for 100 days work by the Centre.