Ever heard of a ‘State Employment Exchange’ struggling to find employment for a sizeable mass of youth in the midst of a number of vacant positions lying within various Government departmentsIJ
One need not look far. The State Employment Exchange of Chhattisgarh has too little to offer to the job aspirants of the entire State.If one goes by the official figures, the submissions made by the Employment Exchange offices to the potential recruiters and placements secured for the aspirants have been steadily declining over the years in the State.During the last 6 months, 1,28,928 job aspirants were registered in the State, but only 58 candidates were provided jobs through the offices of the exchange.
In Raipur, 10,625 unemployed youth registered themselves with the District Employment Exchange office while only 10 candidates could be provided jobs, during this period. If one goes by the total number of unemployed youths registered with the Exchange in the State, it showed a stark figure of 2089487 live registrations in the State.
The Exchange officials however claimed that actual figure of the unemployed youths (which they claimed is very low than what appears in the Exchange office’s record) can’t be measured.
“On request, we sent job applications to government department in 1:12 ratio. Almost all the time, these departments do not inform us about providing job to the candidates, we have referred them. Similarly, the registered candidates rarely take interest on informing us, if he/she gets job to remove their names from our record” the Joint Director of State Employment Exchange, SS Bhagat said.
The officer explained that thousands of youths have been given jobs in the Education Department on contractual basis (Samvida Shikshak).Instead of their registration in the Exchange office, as it required while applying for any government job, neither they nor the Education Department informed us about their appointment.However, with such a long waiting list, a lot of registered applicants have started applying for loans under Prime Minister Rojgar Yojna (PMRY), Mukhyamantri Yuva Swarojgar Yojana and other schemes.
These schemes make it mandatory for the applicants to be registered with the employment exchange office to avail loans. So the youth while waiting for the jobs to materialise through the Exchange office are also trying their luck at self-employment.In fact, it was found that most of the new candidates registering with the Employment Exchange were doing so only to avail the loan facilities under these government schemes.