The Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojna (SJSRY), which was implemented by the Municipal Corporation of Dehradun (MCD) to facilitate employment to the urban unemployed or under employed, is claimed to have facilitated the placement of around 82 youths in different firms and organisation after a specific duration of vocational training.
Pallavi Joshi, the Social and Community Development Officer at the MCD said that under this scheme, youths and women were being provided varied vocational training which later opens job avenues. Various kind of social programmes are being run under it. This work is part of the social welfare scheme of the MCD, she said. The funding is provided by the Urban Development Directorate to the corporation, she said. Joshi added that earlier the MCD was solely looking after the financial arrangement of the schemes but later it was centralised.
Under the SJSRY schemes, youths are given training under 16 trade sectors including hospital and nursing, BPO for call centres, computer operators, house keeping, hospitality, data entry operators, mobile repairing, travel and tourism, retailers, fitters, mechanic training (including washing machine, oven and other domestic appliances), plumber, mason, allied film making, automobile technician and some others, she said.
Different firms and companies from various places including Mass Infotech, Grass Academy, GNG Chandigarh, IACM, Core Education, IlFS, Divya Prem Sewa Mission of Haridwar and Centum learning in association with the SJSRY schemes provide better job options to the aspiring underprivileged youths, she informed.
Joshi also said that earlier this trade related training programme of SJSRY was known as ‘Step Up’ and recently it was retitled ‘Uddyan’. She said that youths are given training of around 45 days to 3 months under this scheme. last year, around 691 aspirants were selected for the training programme and total 352 aspirants participated in the programme. She said that the aspirants have to go through various stages like interview and screening and then the final selection is done.
Committees of total five District Magistrate level officers are in the panel of the team, which finally selects the aspirants. Joshi is also the member of this committee. She claimed that this is proving to be a beneficial and popular scheme among the urban unemployed and underprivileged youths hunting for better job opportunities or self-employment. The MCD also keeps advertising and promoting this scheme through various media and this year around 548 application forms were registered out of which 256 aspirants are sanctioned for the final training, she added.
Apart from providing job opportunities to the youths, this scheme is also turning to be a better option for women. The SJSRY schemes also run several women empowerment and self employment related programmes. Joshi said that a Mahila Swasahita Programme is one such programme meant for women. A total of eight groups are formed with 7-25 women members in each group. The members of this group work on self-employment mode. In order to provide financial support to these groups the individual and group enterprises are linked with banks. There is a provision of subsidy of around 25 per cent to the individual enterprises on loan of maximum of Rs 2 lakh from MCD.
Joshi informed that the group members are also provided a revolving fund of around Rs 25,000 per group and this amount can be used only for some self employment purpose by the group members.