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| Wait for CM’s Dec 5 speech: people more curious about ‘job package’ than ‘quiet diplomacy’ | | |
AHMED ALI FAYYAZ
EARLY TIMES
SRINAGAR, Dec 3: Budget Session announcements of Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, and Finance Minister, Abdul Rahim Rather, have generated so much of high expectations and enthusiasm among the unemployed in Jammu & Kashmir that half-a-million of them have got themselves registered at recruitment exchanges all over the state. Even as both, Omar and Rather, have said in unambiguous terms that the coalition government would draft the state’s first ‘Employment Policy’ and unfold it on occasion of the National Conference founder Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s birth anniversary on December 5th, people at large seem to have mistaken it for an ‘Employment Package”.
Well-placed sources in the government revealed to EARLY TIMES that Department of Planning, functioning directly under Chief Minister, had worked out an employment policy with regard to engagement, regularization and recruitment of gazetted as well as non-gazetted, including class-4th, staff in consultation with different departments in the last about three months. Creation of posts and re-organisation in all government departments, essentially at particular intervals, would now become mandatory.
Sources said that architects of the state’s maiden employment policy were expected to rationalize the system right from notifying the vacancies and drafting of recruitment rules to the process of screening, conducting written tests and interviews. Due to lack of accountability until now, officials with their personal vested interests have been sleeping over the vacancies for decades, referring the same in parts to PSC and SSRB, violating rules concerning in-service promotion and direct recruitment, framing criteria according to the qualifications and merit of their favourites and relatives besides indulging in a host of other manipulative tactics which had, consequently, blocked the entry of merit holders into the government services.
On the other hand, officials in PSC as well as SSRB, have been resorting to different tactics to scupper the prospects of meritorious candidates and pave the way for their favourites. As lately as last fortnight, PSC officials were found to have allotted Jammu centers to Kashmir-based B Sc Forestry candidates who received the admission cards on the eve of the screening test and failed to participate in it. Officials of vested interest have been perpetuating the free-for-all system and declaring all B Sc candidates---including those having degrees in Veterinary Science and Statistics---eligible to appear in the examination for selection of Assistant Conservators of Forest (ACF). With the fraud played by PSC officials to block the entry of B Sc Forestry candidates, most of them from the Valley failed to appear in the test at the Jammu centers.
“I had clearly given my choice of centre as Srinagar. I received the admission slip a day before the screening test and was surprised to find that my centre had been fixed at Hari Singh Higher Secondary School Jammu. Fixing of centers is indeed discretion with PSC but Kashmir-based candidates are examined at Jammu centers only when the number of such candidates is less than 50. But, in this screening test, PSC had received as many as 9500 applications for just 30 posts of ACFs and there was no constraint of fixing Jammu centers for Srinagar candidates”, said Wajahat Waseem (Roll No: 9006066) who has passed B Sc Forestry with ‘A’ Grade four years ago.
“Fixing of the centers is the Commission’s discretion”, said PSC’s Controller of Examinations Ghulam Hassan Mir. He initially insisted that none of Kashmir-based candidates, excluding those who had given such choice in the form, had been fixed in Jammu. However, when a couple of examples were pointed out to him, Mir justified with the argument that it was PSC’s “discretion”.
This fraudulent behaviour of the officials at PSC and SSRB has disappointed Tariq Ahmed Ganai of Dangarpora Shadimarg to the extent that he is dying to get a job of a Forester or even the far inferior Forest Guard. After completing his M Sc in Forestry, Ganai is presently working on his Ph D in Forestry.
“If this non-sense system goes on and Omar Abdullah fails to keep his word of doing justice to the youth, in the next couple of years, Tariq Ahmed Ganai with his Ph D in Forestry will be a Forester or Forest Guard and some bureaucrat’s relative with simple B Sc Statistics will be his ACF, three steps higher”, said one of Ganai’s classmates. He described Forest Minister Mian Altaf as a “man of high integrity” but observed that in understanding such problems, he had proved to be “as illiterate as his predecessors Qazi Mohammad Afzal and Mohiuddin Sofi”. “Sofi Sahab and Qazi Sahab kept wailing till their end that recruitment of ACFs and Range Officers had not taken place through genuine doors since 1984. Now Mian Sahab is being taken for a ride by vested interests”, added he.
It has been widely observed that the trained professionals disappointed by PSC and SSRB have stopped mentioning their professional degrees like MBBS, BV Sc, B Sc Agriculture, M Sc Agriculture, B Sc Forestry, M Sc Forestry, BE, B Tech, ME, M Tech and have been applying for inferior jobs. “Luckiest” of them have been able to lay their hands on the posts of Rehbar-e-Taleem, Junior Assistant, Village Level Workers, Patwaris, Forest Guards, Drivers etc. A number of such youth are also working on pretty inferior positions in some private companies.
Even as parts of the “Employment Package” ---like formation of J&K State Overseas Employment Corporation and creation of 2,000 fresh posts in Health Department---have already rolled out, thousands of unemployed youth in the Valley seem to be eagerly waiting for Chief Minister’s speech on December 5th.
Reports from many localities say that men associated with the job mafia have already fanned out to compile “List of Unemployed”. With their “proven credentials”, like arranging jobs of Constables against cash payment in Budgam and Kupwara districts, these touts of influential men in politics and bureaucracy have since released their “Rate Lists” and are, accordingly, collecting money from the aspirants. Highest rate of Rs 6 Lakh has been fixed by them for the post of Sub Inspectors for which recruitment process is already underway.
On the streets, nobody really seems interested in the Chidambaram-Omar cacophony of “quiet diplomacy”, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s forthcoming visit to Pakistan, Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s campaign for “demilitarization”, outcome of CBI inquiry in Shopian, J&K state getting two Central Universities and the Human Right Inc’s “discovery of mass graves”.
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