Guwahati, March 26 (IANS) Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday said that the state administration has been working towards providing equal opportunities to women and as a result of this, women’s participation in the labour force in the state is higher than the national average.
According to Sarma, the share of women workers in the total labour force is 52.8 percent in rural areas and 31.5 percent in urban areas in Assam. The CM shared data in which it was shown that the national average of women’s labour force is 47.6 per cent in urban areas. The share of women in the rural labour workforce is 28 per cent–both these figures are less than that of Assam.
Taking to X, Chief Minister Sarma wrote, “Equal Partners in growth. In Assam, due to our safe environment, empowering policies and a thrust on skilling women, their participation in the labour force has steadily increased over the years and is now above the national average at 52.8 per cent in rural areas and 31.5 per cent in urban areas.”
The Assam government has been running a slew of schemes targeting the upliftment of females in the state. Recently, the government launched a financial support initiative — the Nijut Moina scheme to help the education of girl students in the state. The latest government initiative aims to cover 10 lakh girl students with an outlay of Rs 1,500 crore, and in the first year, over 1.6 lakh girls will get Rs 240 crore.
Speaking about the scheme, Sarma said, “Assam has started a big initiative by launching Nijut Moina. Under this scheme, the girl students who study at the graduation level will receive a monthly scholarship of more than Rs 1000, and those who pursue post-graduation are set to get Rs 2500 per month to bear the education expenditure. In this way, we want that girl students should not depend on their parents to continue higher education.”
The Chief Minister argued that with the launch of this initiative, the child marriage cases will come down in Assam. “We are anticipating that Nijut Moina will be able to eradicate the evil of child marriage from the state,” he said. Sarma further said that one of the primary conditions to avail this scheme is that the girl students will remain unmarried till they reach the post-graduation level.
“As the aim of this initiative is to eradicate child marriage, the girl students studying at the graduation level must remain unmarried till they finish their undergraduate curriculum. Once they reach the post-graduation level, there is no bar in remaining unmarried to avail the Nijut Moina scheme. At that point, they will reach their minimum age of marriage, and we also desire that the girls get married in a specific period and lead a happy life,” he stated. The Chief Minister also laid down another condition that no daughter of MP, MLA or minister can get the benefits of this financial support initiative.
–IANS
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