SHUBHANGI SHIFA
Ranchi, Feb 18: Amid Covid, third party hiring and officials handling several departments simultaneously, the Employment Exchange in Ranchi is struggling to maintain its identity and usefulness for the past two years.
With as many as 31710 unemployed youths registered in Ranchi as per available data, only 5007 youth have been provided employment by the department within the past five years, while the number drastically drops to 938 for the past two years. Of the total unemployed youth presently, 9483 are graduates, 9450 have +2 degrees while 4431 are 10th pass.
According to the statement presented in the winter session of the assembly in December 2021, over six lakh people had registered themselves with different employment exchange offices across 24 districts till June this year. The government had then conceded that it failed to provide jobs to any of them so far. “In the last 23 months, there has been a spike of 638 per cent in applications by jobless youths in employment exchanges as compared to 2019,” Labour and Employment Minister Satyanand Bhokta had said.
Meanwhile, in Ranchi, 17604 youths registered with the Exchange in 2019, while in 2020, 2185 youth filed papers as unemployed. At the same time, around 84 vacancy notifications were sent to these youths in 2020, while the number went down to 20 in 2021. Around 488 youths were employed through the Rozgar Mela organized by the department in 2019, whereas 450 received appointments at the Recruitment Camps organized in the same year. This number also decreased to 41 with no Rozgar Mela and Recruitment Camps organized in September and October in 2020.
As far as the JMM’s election promise of allowance for the unemployed, the scheme is still to be implemented. Officials stated that in June 2021 the process for providing an allowance of Rs 5000 per month to the unemployed had begun in the month of June 2021, however, the process was stopped due to orders from superiors and the money was surrendered to the Department of Labour, Employment, Training and Development by September-October of the same year. The process hasn’t been restarted yet nor have the officials received any information as to when it would restart.
In regard to the reason for this, a senior official stated, ‘Several applications were received when the process for this had begun. We even have a committee at the district level under the chairmanship of DC Chhavi Ranjan that had then approved an allowance for around 300 youths. Before the funds were transferred, we received an order from the Labour, Employment, Training and Development department to stop the process. As far as I know, the required qualification was for technically qualified youths, while other kinds of unemployed youths including Graduate level were not mentioned. We hope that the process will begin soon after rectification in the next financial year.’
