Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that the poor, the migrant labourers and the small businesses need immediate financial assistance from the government otherwise it may lead to massive job losses in the country.
Gandhi was addressing a press conference via video conference.
"The money is needed today, the poor need money today, the small and medium industries need money today, and we need to provide the support today. Else, the job losses will become a Tsunami, we need to protect them," said the Congress leader.
"You can ask any businessman and he will tell you that there is a clash between the economic supply chain and the healthcare system in the red, green and orange zones. We need to resolve these things," he added.
To a question about the state of migrants who are being forced to walk hundreds of kilometres, the Congress leader said, "Start putting money directly into accounts of 50 per cent of India's poor households, it is going to cost Rs 65,000 crores, it will transform the way people are thinking about the current situation. We have to understand when you are on daily wages you do not have a choice, we have to give them a choice."
"We are in an emergency and idea of injecting a sum of Rs 7,500 directly into hands of poor is critical and it is not such a big price. Secondly, the idea that we can simply let our job creators drown is not feasible, we have to protect to them," he added.
He added that 100 days of guaranteed wage employment under MGNREGA should be doubled to 200 days to provide more relief and avenues to earn.
He said that a strategy needs to be devised to open the lockdown placed to curb the spread of coronavirus and added that transparency is needed in the Central government's actions in this regard.
( With inputs from ANI )