Unions protest against national monetisation plan

A joint forum of central trade unions organised a nationwide protest on Thursday against the National Monetisation Pipeline Project.

The National Monetisation Pipeline Project envisages leasing out various government assets for various durations of lease. The funds so generated will be invested in expanding infrastructure.

A statement by the joint forum of trade unions stated that the Joint Platform, independent federations/associations organized Nationwide Protest Day - 7th October 2021, against the so called ‘National Monetisation Pipeline’ (NMP) project announced by the Union Finance Minister on 23 August 2021, claiming to raise Rs 6 lakh crore over the next four years.

Also Read | National Monetisation Plan: A challenging, complex task

"Our accusation is that this is nothing but a nefarious design to hand over all infrastructural assets to private hands virtually free for revenue generation by them without any obligation of capital cost and share a small part of that huge revenue with the government," it said.

The immediate effect of this latest government move will be price-rise for the common man for all the infrastructural services being leased out to private players.

Because the private operators, as per the official NMP document, have been empowered to increase the user/service charges of all those infrastructures and make windfall profit at the cost of common people, it stated.

Contrary to the argument by the government, that jobs would be created, thousands of workers will lose their jobs worsening the already alarming unemployment situation.

Quality of jobs would further deteriorate. The SC/ST sections would be among the worst-affected, as there is no reservation in jobs in the private sector, it stated.

"Add to this the government’s announcement to sell 100 profit making PSUs. This means that the profit flowing into government coffers will stop and start flowing into private corporate’s coffers. Again, it does not require deep economic knowledge to know that government’s ability to provide social security to people will be curtailed due to these steps," it said.

"The Government can fill its coffers by taxing the rich and super-rich in India. But the Government refuses to tax their friends, rather their masters-- the rich and the super-rich.This would further deepen the inequalities leading to more miseries for common man," it added.

The trade unions would intensify their struggle in the coming days for role back of this policy in the national interest, it stated. The joint forum includes INTUC, AITUC, HMS CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC and also Independent Sectoral Federations/Associations.

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