Punjab Congress on Wednesday said tall claims by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal for providing jobs to lakhs of unemployed youth is not only a white lie but great mischief with the youth waiting for jobs including those belonging to reserved categories, the SCs and BCs.
In a statement issued here, Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa said that it had became a fashion among members of Badal family, mainly Chief Minister and his son Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal to make false statements and then push in false advertising campaign to make people believe their falsehood.
He said that the data collected by Congress party worker Jasdeepak Singh, a Chandigarh based RTI activist, has unmasked the Badals on job generation front. He said that a separate department of Job generation and training was set up by SAD-BJP government to mislead the people where as fact is that the department is defunct and it has not generated even single job in the last seven years. The information sought by the Chandigarh doctor under RTI has vindicated the stand of Congress party.
The official data on employment generation, in hand with the Congress party has revealed that the employment rate in Punjab was just at an average of 5 to 6 percent since the time SAD-BJP government took over in 2007. Bajwa said that more than 50 lakh youth were unemployed in Punjab and number is adding up every year.
He said that as per details provided under RTI, SAD-BJP government has only provided jobs to only 35034 unemployed persons out of 530724 persons registered during SAD-BJP regime beginning 2007 till August 2013 which is only 6.6 percent. The PPCC president said that out of 219784 Scheduled castes registered with the Job Generation department till August 2013 only 2680 persons were provided jobs which is just 1.21 percent. In OBC category the jobs were provided to only 553 out of 19969 registered unemployed. It is 2.76 percent.
For other reserved categories jobs were given to only 250 persons out of 9966 registered persons and the percentage comes out only 2.50 percent. As far as the general category is concerned, only 8 percent of registered unemployed youth got the job.