The Hindu Business Line : AP Govt to bear redeployment expenses for 4,000 VRS staff

AS part of its proactive initiatives of economic reforms with human face approach, the Andhra Pradesh Government has now decided to expand the retraining and redeployment assistance to cover 4,000 employees who had availed themselves of VRS.

According to the State Public Enterprises Department, for the first time since the social safety net programme (SSNP) was launched as a part of the AP public enterprise reforms programme (APERP), the State Government would be funding all the training and redeployment assistance projects to be conducted by the SSNP.

For the current financial year, the State Government has allocated Rs 4.8 crore towards meeting the expenses of retraining and redeployment assistance projects of the SSNP. Hitherto, the costs of these projects were met by assistance from the Department for International Development (DFID).

While DFID had provided an assistance of Rs 3.5 crore to SSNP, the amount was utilised to assist around 5,500 VRS-availed employees across the State. The VRS costs of Rs 326 crore were, however, borne in by the State Government from its own funds. Over 22,000 employees of various public sector enterprises opted for the VRS package so far as a part of the public enterprise reforms.

Though the State Government has decided to assist the SSNP initiatives, the ongoing programmes that were cleared by the DFID earlier would continue till their completion with the help of the funds already advanced by the external donor agency.

According to this arrangement, while the State Government would meet the costs of the training and redeployment assistance projects, DFID would bear the administrative costs for the projects cleared earlier.

Till date, SSNP has organised 550 different retraining programmes spread across 21 districts of the State. The training programmes range from multi-purpose village mechanic to highly specialised CAD/CAM computer programmes. As per the latest estimates, SSNP has covered as many as 70 different skill-set areas through the training programmes.

Some of the leading institutions that were associated with SSNP in redeployment of the VRS-availed employees include the National Institute for Fashion Technology, Computer Maintenance Corporation, NIIT, College of Agricultural Engineering at Bapatla, Nayudamma Footwear Technology, Central Institute of Tool Design, National Small Industries Service, Andhra Mahila Sabha and the International Institute of Hotel Management.

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