Job event called off, realtors to go ahead with placements

Noida: Realtors’ association Naredco called off its event to hand over letters offering jobs at construction sites to workers on Friday, days after it announced the virtual ceremony would be attended by the Prime Minister and the CM.
“We can’t say what the reason is but the event has been postponed. We do not have the next date yet,” a Naredco official said. The association has signed a memorandum of understanding with the UP government to provide 2.5 lakh jobs to workers left jobless because of the lockdown.
Through an outreach drive from its Sector 94 office, where it had run a call centre for a month, Naredco said 1,08,874 workers can now get employment at project sites. “Workers have started coming to the city and they will be placed this week onwards. We will take at least three months to place all the 2.5 lakh migrant workers that we have promised,” Naredco-UP president RK Arora said.
Asked about the return of workers to the city, weeks after they left in large numbers in trains and buses as joblessness and hunger driven them to extreme anxiety, Bhartiya Mazdoor Sangh’s (BMS) north zone headPawan Kumar said, “Workers have no choice but to return to cities because villages have nothing to hold them back and the MNREGA benefits are also too little to support the entire family. So industries and builders are now sending special buses to fetch workers from as far as Bihar.”
Noida and Greater Noida normally employ around 4 lakh labourers at construction sites. According to industry sources, only around 30,000 are currently working at sites.