Delhi Budget 2022 focuses on schemes to create job opportunities for women: Manish Sisodia

NEW DELHI: Presenting Delhi's 'Rozgar Budget' in the Assembly, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said it has many schemes focused on creating employment opportunities for women. Sisodia, who also holds the finance portfolio, said the government will launch Smart Urban Farming in association with the IARI (Pusa Institute) to increase the green cover of Delhi, hike the supply of nutritious organic food and provide employment opportunities to women at home.

He also announced a portal Rozgar Bazaar 2.0 that will be equipped with new features, including smart matching, placement tracking, verification of employers and a robust analytics platform for policy formulation. "Through this portal, we aim to provide at least one lakh jobs every year to the youth of Delhi and especially women," Sisodia said. "Job seekers will be able to explore various online and offline courses, seek one-on-one sessions with career counsellors and also information on government jobs," he said.

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Noting that India is one of the most backward countries in Asia in the participation of women in the workforce, the deputy chief minister said while the country has seen impressive economic growth over the past 20 years, women's participation in the workforce declined during this period. "It has come down from 34 per cent in 1999 to 20 per cent in 2019, which is contrary to the worldwide trend. For example, women constitute 30 per cent of the workforce in Bangladesh and 60 per cent in China," he said.

Sisodia also stressed that women have been most affected by unemployment caused during the pandemic. "All economists agree that as long as the women of India are out of the workforce, the country's dream of becoming a developed country from a developing one will remain just a dream. "Keeping this in view, the new schemes introduced in this year's budget have focused on creating more and more employment opportunities for women," he said.

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