Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, Nov 1: The State Government’s much-awaited fast track recruitment has come out a cropper with just 10,000 unemployed youths recruited during past about two years and over 70,000 vacancies awaiting referral to various recruitment agencies. The euphoria created by the Government on payment of Voluntary Services Allowance (VSA) to unemployed youths, which had led to large number of registration of unemployed youths with District Counselling and Employment Centres, has also died down with registration going down to nearly half in just past three months with youths finding no hope of getting job or the VSA.
Official sources told the Excelsior that more than 70,000 vacancies were pending in different Government Departments in the State in three categories—Gazetted, Non-Gazetted and Class-IV while the three major recruitment agencies have appointed just 10,000 youths in the Government sector during past about two years as against about 30,000 posts referred to them by the various Departments.
“Such was the slow process of referring vacancies to the recruitment agencies like Public Service Commission (PSC), Services Selection Board and District Recruitment Boards (DRBs) followed by advertisement and process of recruitment by the three agencies that it was taking months together for completing the process of recruitment. There was no name of fast track recruitment in any of the three recruitment agencies,’’ sources said.
They added that the Government has not referred any vacancies to the recruitment agencies on fast track basis. All three agencies were taking normal time in advertisement and recruitment of the unemployed youths in different Departments.
Apart from a large number of vacancies and lengthy recruitment process, the euphoria created by the State Government over providing VSA to the unemployed youths has also died down. The number of unemployed youths had gone up from mere 2.5 lakh to over 6 lakh after the announcement of VSA as the Government had kept registration with District Employment and Counseling Centres as a pre-condition for grant of VSA to the eligible youth.
With very few youths getting the meager VSA in view of several conditions imposed by the Government, the unemployed youths have not renewed registration with the Employment Centres bringing the number of registered unemployed youth from 6.03 lakh about six months back to just 3.3 lakh at present. Under Compulsory Notification of Vacancies Act 1962, the youths had to renew registration with Employment Centres (earlier known as Employment Exchanges) after every three years to keep their registration in tact.
Majority of the youths had registered themselves hoping to get VSA but with their hopes dashed to ground over 2.5 lakh unemployed youths have not renewed their registration, sources said.
Quoting official figures, they said that the Government has 9318 vacancies of Gazetted cadre, 43,415 in Non-Gazetted cadre and 18,872 of Class-IV at present. Contrary to large number of vacancies, the Government has referred only about 30,000 posts to the recruitment agencies during past two years. The PSC has been referred 3737 posts, the SSB 18,110 posts and District Recruitment Boards 8715 posts.
Of them, the PSC has recruited 663 youths, the SSB and some other agencies 7998 youths and District Recruitment Boards 1404 youths.
The Government had sometime back announced that it would announce nearly 65,000 jobs under fast track recruitment. However, there has been no such recruitment so far.
Sources pointed out that steep decline in registered unemployed youths from 6.03 lakhs to just 3.3 lakh was mainly attributed to the disenchantment among the unemployed on the complete failure of VSA as well as the Government’s new recruitment policy under which the newly recruited youths were entitled to a meager amount for first five years in the service.
Though 55,000 youths were getting VSA it was too meager even to fill an application form, sources said, adding that it was also being given for a limited period.
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