By IANS
New Delhi : Barely hours after extending the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme to the entire nation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday said more such schemes for under privileged people would be unveiled over the next few weeks.
The government Friday extended its flagship pro-poor NREG programme to guarantee 100 days of work to each rural family from 330 selected districts now to the entire country.
“We have schemes like health insurance scheme for below poverty line citizens, national old age pension and the national policy for farmers. We will be announcing them soon,” the prime minister said on the margins of a book release function in the capital.
He also said that the Unorganised Sector Workers Bill has already been introduced in parliament.
The decision to extend the NREG scheme to the entire country was taken at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and attended among others by Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram.
The decision comes just two days after Rahul Gandhi, the newly appointed general secretary of the Congress party, met Manmohan Singh along with a delegation and sought the scheme’s extension to the entire country.
The delegation said NREGA was a landmark legislation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, an important promise in the Congress manifesto and a key component of the National Common Minimum Programme.