Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, June 16: Unemployed Agriculture professionals today protested against the Government decision to consider the promotion of Agriculture Extension Assistants to Junior Agriculture Extension Officers (JAEO) as per SRO-442.
Raising slogans against SRO-442, which talks of filling up of 100 percent posts of JAEO on promotion basis, the protesting unemployed Agriculture professionals held a demonstration near the Press Club Jammu.
They were demanding filling up of JAEO posts on 60:40 basis i.e. 60 percent by direct recruitment and 40 percent by promotional quota as this post used to be entry level post in Agriculture Production Department as per the earlier SRO of 2004.
“More than 500 posts of JAEO are lying vacant in JKAPD but due to SRO-442, these posts are not being referred for direct recruitment , thereby violating our fundamental right to equal opportunity,” they said adding that same is the case with the entry level posts AEO (Agriculture Extension Officer) in gazetted cadre wherein the ratio between direct and promotional quota was 50:50 under SRO-179 but again the Government came up with a new SRO-433 reducing direct recruitment to 20 percent only thus further diminishing the chances of young professionals in the subject of Agriculture.
Claiming that the Agriculture Production Department in its proposal `Cadre Review-Reorganization thereof’ vide order number Agri/DAJ/Estt-162/2019/20/2137, dated 29/06/2019 had proposed the merger of two entry level posts at non-gazetted cadre, the protesting Agriculture professionals alleged that the department was now considering the promotion of AEAs to JAEOs as per SRO-442, which is contradictory to Cadre Review order.
They appealed the Lt Governor Manoj Sinha to personally intervene into the matter and save the career of hundreds of unemployed Agriculture professionals.
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