It may be recalled that in August last year, the scheme of Self Help Groups (SHGs) of Engineers drawn from various streams like Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Structural, Electronics and Communications, Computers and the like was abolished as the practice was reserving a portion of projects of development exclusively for Engineers in Jammu and Kashmir under the said SHGs. Several reasons were assigned for it and those Engineers associated with different departments and organisations in public works were to come under ”reorganisation and rationalisation” with effect from December this year. In other words, nearly 15000 Engineers who were otherwise engaged in livelihood under the scheme, were rendered jobless . This move, though carrying various arguments in favour taken by the Government, was widely criticised on the ground that instead of solving the unemployment problem especially of the professional young people , the ones earning livelihood were rendered jobless.Like most of other states , Jammu and Kashmir too was facing spurt in the number of unemployed educated persons and it was natural that the affected people took to streets and protested and never expected a rough treatment in the shape of losing livelihood.
In only September this year, in response to lot of hue and cry on the issue, the UT Government felt the need to re-examine the entire issue for which a committee was set up to go deep into the matter and suggest recommendations to the Government. The points of reference were to go into the background of the very creation of the scheme, the nature and the details of reservation of works for these Groups of Engineers, the quality and cost aspects of the projects and the like. The Committee, undoubtedly was to examine issues like alternate course of action keeping in view and be guided by the public interest and the future of the engineers. Agreed, these Self Help Groups numbering nearly 2500 were “created” in the year 2004 by the then Chief Minister to offset the pressure on the then Government in respect of accommodating the rolled out engineers from the professional institutions but not being employed by the then state but to disengage them like this, is not justified. It was, however, neither an ad-hoc arrangement nor any prevalent practice only to engage concerned persons in earning livelihood. However, a via-media and a middle path had to be suggested and recommended by the Committee which had top authorities from Public Works, Power Development, Jal Shakti, Rural Development Departments etc as its members.
It is now nearly over three months since the constitution of this Committee but so far no headway has been achieved to resolve the issue since there are no recommendations received by the UT Government although , no doubt, a few meetings have been convened . Ostensibly, no decisions have been made perhaps in the absence of reaching a consensus on the issue. However, since they are free to recommend and suggest , this way or the other way, there should be explicit and clear cut advice rendered to the Government and not sleep over the entire issue. That type of approach is tantamount to purely delaying tactics and was no solution to the problem . Thousands of engineers whose bread and butter are at stake are pinning their hopes in the said High Powered Committee to decide their future? Most of them are in their late 40s and even in early 50s as learnt by us and their families and children too are under great strain as the fate of their bread earners is uncertain . It is, therefore, hoped that an early breakthrough would be achieved in the sensitive matter .
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