| Jammu sees surge in unemployment, but Government yet to hold survey | | | Ishtiyaq Ahmad
Early Times Report
Srinagar, Apr 26: The Jammu province of the state is witnessing a sharp surge in the number of educated, unemployed youth.
Sources told Early Times that while about 41 thousand unemployed were registered in the Kashmir division, 45,669 youth were registered with the counseling centres in the Jammu division upto December 2017.
The number could be higher as over the years the exact number of unemployed educated youth in the state was not known, the source said.
"As per directions of the Supreme Court, the registration with the employment exchanges was held as not mandatory for obtaining government job. The government did not have exact figures about educated or uneducated unemployed persons," the sources said.
Previous data had revealed that 60 doctors with MBBS degrees are jobless in Jammu while the number of unemployed engineers was 466. "More than 100 diploma holders are jobless in Jammu while the number of post graduates who were denied employment opportunities is 610. Furthermore, there are 1642 graduates in Jammu region without any job while as those in category of 'others' are 7916 in number," the data had revealed.
"Unemployment is because job creating schemes aren't properly working. "Make in India, Digital India, Startup India and the smart cities project and other were all aimed at creating jobs for the country's youth, but the Jammu and Kashmir government has failed to deliver on that promise," said one of the social activists in Jammu.
"The BJP's key election promise was job creation. Criticizing the UPA government for failing to provide employment, the BJP manifesto stated that 'the country has been dragged through 10 years of jobless growth by the Congress-led UPA government. Under the broader economic revival, BJP will accord high priority to job creation and opportunities for entrepreneurship'.
"Though reducing unemployment was a major goal of the BJP government in the country, it has not been able to fulfill its promise of job creation in the state," the activist maintained.
As per the Economic Survey of 2011, the number of unemployed youths registered in various district employments and counselling centres was 6.01 lakh.
Officials said the number would touch more than 10 lakh in 2018 as thousands of youths had been passing out from various universities in the country every year.
One of the social activists said that there is a less figure of non-gazetted employees of Jammu in the civil secretariat.
He said of the nearly 4.5 lakh employees working in government and semi-government establishments, including corporations, in Jammu and Kashmir, only 25 per cent were from Jammu.
He said Jammu had 20,000 unemployed technocrats and Kashmir less than 5,000.
The sources said that despite all this the government is yet to initiate survey to know the exact magnitude of unemployment in the state.
The government had assured in the Legislative Assembly a survey to know the "exact number of the unemployed youth in Jammu and Kashmir".
After the PDP-BJP coalition and opposition differed on the number of educated unemployed youth in the State, the former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu had said that the government would undertake a survey in this regard. "We will undertake a survey to get the exact figure of unemployed youth," he had said.
However sources told Early Times that nothing concrete has been done in this regard so far. "Though the government had asked the departments to convey the exact number of youth in Jammu and Kashmir, no formal communication has been located which contradicts the tall claim of the government to initiate the survey on this matter," the sources said.
They said the matter does not end up here as the employment exchanges across Jammu and Kashmir and also overseas employment corporation has been found non-functional.
It is to mention here that the Jammu and Kashmir has earned a distinction to have the highest number of unemployment rate in entire Northern India.
As per the "Annual Employment and Unemployment Survey Report released by Labour Bureau under Union Ministry of Labour and Employment, J&K has the highest unemployment rate in North India with 10% unemployment rate.
The government of India had also revealed to Lok Sabha, that nearly 40 percent youth, in the age group of 15 to 30 years, are unemployed in Jammu and Kashmir and that the number was higher than the national level. |
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