CHANDIGARH, Sept 26 — Senior Aam Aadmi Party leader and Punjab Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema declared that structural changes to the rural employment guarantee framework have led to a sharp contraction in work opportunities for rural laborers and marginalized communities across the country.
Addressing a press conference, the Finance Minister stated that altering core operational components following the restructuring into the VB-G RAM-G scheme has severely weakened employment generation capacity. He noted that official figures reflect a drop of nearly 9.56 crore person-days of employment generated compared with the previous financial year, falling from approximately 30 crore person-days down to 20.4 crore.
“The BJP had repeatedly claimed that only the name of the scheme had been changed and that everything else remained the same. However, several components within the scheme that generated employment had been altered,” Harpal Singh Cheema asserted.
The Cabinet Minister maintained that the decline disproportionately affects Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households, who constitute roughly 87 per cent of the registered rural labor force under the initiative. He stated that despite commitments to expand guaranteed work days, operational modifications have restricted access to daily wage opportunities for vulnerable populations.
Cheema declared that the reductions expose an unsupportive policy approach toward working-class citizens, affirming that the state government will continue to advocate for full employment guarantees and fair wage protection for rural workers.
