India successfully carrying out world’s biggest vaccination programme

INTERNATIONAL DESK: Highlighting India’s strategic steps taken for jobs and social protection in the situation created by COVID-19, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that India is successfully carrying out the world’s biggest free vaccination programme against the pandemic.

“India’s free vaccination programme is globally one of the biggest. We have covered 875 million doses as of today. Migrant workers exceeding four million were assisted. Construction workers were given consistent support to sail through the trying times, and most importantly, more than 100 million rural unorganised workers received wages through work amounting to more than Rs 1 trillion,” Sitharaman said.

She was addressing the United Nations (UN) high-level discussion on jobs and social protection for poverty eradication.

The minister said the pandemic has severely affected all sections of people across the world and noted that India has taken several measures to ameliorate the immediate distress, arrest job losses and provide necessary protection to vulnerable sections of the population.

She also referred to a comprehensive economic package under the ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ to revive economic growth during the pandemic.

Sitharaman said a financial package of USD 366 billion amounting to more than 13 per cent of India’s GDP was announced to create employment opportunities for workers of the unorganised sector, strengthening the MSME sector and for promoting the rural economy.

Finance Minister said that there is a need for collaboration and learning from the experiences of other countries.

“The comprehensive social protection system envisaged to be created under the proposed global accelerator for jobs and social protection should have digitalization of public financial management systems at the core of the design,” she said. (ANI)