The Agriculture engineering graduates have demanded to establish a separate ‘Directorate for Agriculture Engineering’ by segregating it from the Agriculture Directorate in Chhattisgarh.
The State Government should start appointment as soon as possible to provide employment to more than 500 unemployed Agriculture engineering graduates of the State, they have demanded.
Talking to mediapersons, the office-bearers of the students union of Indira Gandhi Agriculture University including Shailendra Srivastava, Hemkant Chandravanshi and Ashish Kerketta said that the students would take out a procession from Telibandha and handover a memorandum to the Agriculture Minister at his residence on Friday.
They said that despite being an agricultural state and the admission in B.Tech (Agriculture) being taken through Pre-Engineering test (PET) organized by Professional Examination Board (VYAPAM), the B.Tech (Agriculture) course has not been recognized as a professional course. ‘We demanded the State government to recognize the course as a professional course,’ they said.
They further said that the students after completing the courses are not given opportunity in government jobs.
The Agriculture Department takes engineers of other branches like civil engineering on the posts which need to be filled by engineering graduates. The government should appoint at least one engineer at block level as done by other departments.
The new Agriculture Directorate should be established on the lines of Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh which give ample opportunity to Agricultural engineers, they said.
They also alleged that the skill development programme started by the State government has done nothing in the Agriculture domain.