Even as the Congress-led Punjab Government is patting its own back for organising job fairs, the Opposition parties — the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) — are criticising the Government for “befooling the youth” and “insulting them by telling them to accept placements lower than the minimum wages applicable in the State”.
Condemning the State Government, AAP MlA and the leader of Opposition in Vidhan Sabha Sukhpal Singh Khaira on Thursday said that it was befooling the State’s youth on the name of providing job to one person from every household as part of its ‘Ghar Ghar Naukri’ poll campaign.
“like other promises of weeding out drugs, waiving off loans of farmers and providing mobile phones to the youth, the Government is also shying away from fulfilling the promise of providing Government jobs to the youth of Punjab. The hype of organising job fairs to provide employment to the youth created in media is nothing but jugglery of words,” said Khaira.
AAP leader pointed that the Congress Government was banking upon the private sector to fulfil its pre-poll promise of job for all. “The private universities and institutes are organising this kind of jobs fairs for students for decades. What the Government and Minister Charanjit Singh Channi has to do in itIJ” asked Khaira adding that thousands of students are returning disillusioned from these job fairs as there are very few companies to match their profile.
“Even the monthly salary being offered to the students is very less so they are rejecting it out rightly….The packages being offered to the educated youth are much lower than that of a daily wager, how can one make both ends meet with that little moneyIJ” Khaira asked.
At the same time, Khaira criticised the Government for failing to fill up the vacant posts in different State Government departments. “Thousands of posts are lying vacant in different Government departments that must be filled by Congress to fulfil its promise of providing Government jobs to the youth in letter and spirit,” he said.
DON’T INSUlT STUDENTS: SAD
SAD on Thursday asked the Punjab Government and its Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi to deliver jobs to students instead of insulting them by telling them to accept placements lower than the minimum wages applicable in the State.
“It is shocking that the Government and its Technical Education Minister are allowing companies to recruit students with technical diplomas and degrees at rates which are lower than the minimum wage prescribed in the State,” said the State’s former Minister and SAD spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema.
He said that job offers at the so-called Rozgar Mela, which was actually an annual placement drive which had been appropriated by the Punjab Government for cheap publicity, ranged between Rs 6,000 to Rs 9,000 per month.
Cheema said that these job offers were a blatant violation of established norms which stipulated that semi-skilled labour force should be given a minimum compensation of Rs 321 per day and skilled manpower that of Rs 356 per day, as the students at the so-called Mela were being offered even less than the pay of Rs 303 per day fixed for agriculture labour.
Blaming Channi for allowing the private companies to flout norms so easily, Cheema said that what was most condemnable was that instead of fixing norms for recruitment in the placement drive which had been taken under the ambit of the State Government, Channi insulted students who had pointed out this anomaly to him a day before. Channi must tell why he protected the interests of the private companies by taunting students and telling them not to aim for big companies like Infosys and HCl and set their sights lower, asked Cheema.
Asking the Punjab Government to stop befooling the youth and start delivering, Cheema said that the Government should tell why it was not filling vacancies in Government jobs. “Even 35,000 contractual employees whose jobs had been regularised by the SAD-BJP Government are still to get the benefit under the new Government…Services of outsourced employees have been terminated. Sewa Kendras, which were employing thousands of educated youth, have been closed down,” he pointed.