By Arun Pratap Singh
DEHRADUN, 5 Dec: Government today admitted that only 12,747 unemployed youth had got employed through employment offices of the government during the past 5 years. Labour & Employment Minister Harak Singh Rawat admitted this in response to a starred question of BJP MLA Deshraj Karnwal during Question Hour on the second day of the winter session of the state assembly here today.
In fact, even these youth had been given employment in the private sector through employment fairs organised by the state and district level employment offices of the state government! Interestingly, the 12,747 youth had been employed against the total number of 9,24,511 unemployed registered in employment offices of the state. In response to a supplementary question by Karnwal, Rawat admitted that Employment Offices were no longer recruiting registered unemployed for government jobs since there were various other departments and agencies that were doing this job against the requisition forwarded by various government offices. He added that departments like the State Public Service Commission, Subordinate Services Commission, etc., were recruiting the eligible youth for various departments against the vacancies submitted by them. In addition, class four employees were no longer recruited by the government and were outsourced from outsourcing agencies including UPNL.
In response to the supplementary questions of Munna Singh Chauhan, Vinod Chamoli and Suresh Rathore, Harak Singh claimed that the Employment Offices would soon be made nodal agencies for skill development and for different outsourcing agencies as the employment offices still had adequate trained staff in this regard.
In response to another question, Rawat admitted that the government was not in a position to force private industry to implement reservations while recruiting eligible persons. He further admitted that it was not possible also to force private sector employers to essentially recruit only people from the state but it still ensured that the 70 percent of unskilled labour employed by the private sector was from Uttarakhand only.
In response to a starred question by BJP MLA Chandan Ram Das, Forest & Environment Minister Harak Singh claimed that no Chief Minister had given any assurance in the House that enclosures would be constructed in every district to keep monkeys caught from various areas in the state. He, however, added that some enclosures were being constructed for monkeys to neuter them before releasing them back in the wild. He added that the National Wildlife Board did not permit the monkeys to be kept in enclosures for life or a long time and, hence, the government could not do much despite the fact that the monkey menace had assumed serious proportions in the state. He claimed that, unlike in the past, directions had been issued to the forest and the Police departments to ensure that other states did not release monkeys caught by them in Uttarakhand territory. In response to another supplementary, Harak Singh declared that the government would grant compensation to the victims of monkey bite as was done in case of other wild animal attacks.
In response to a supplementary question by Kunwar Pranav Singh, Harak Singh informed the House that the state government was urging the Central authorities concerned to declare wild boars as vermin so they could be shot dead if found roaming in farmers’ fields. When Pranav Singh suggested that Nilgai ought to be also declared vermin and permission granted to shoot it, Suresh Rathore and Deshraj Karnawal objected and said that Nilgai was also considered sacred by many villagers and could and ought not to be killed.
In response to a starred question by BJP MLA Khajan Das, Urban Development Minister Madan Kaushik claimed that there was no provision to give jobs to family member of deceased sanitation workers, though the authorities were considerate enough to consider this and, so far, 724 family members of deceased sanitation workers had been recruited. Khajan Das objected to the written response to the question, claiming that the copy of the written response given by the Minister sent to him personally had a different response and it had claimed that there was a provision to grant employment to one eligible family member of deceased sanitation workers in municipal bodies. Munna Singh described this as a serious issue and claimed that the House proceedings were not being taken seriously and emphasised that the minister could not give different responses to a single question. He added that the minister ought to admit his mistake if such a development had taken place due to some inadvertent clerical error. Kaushik claimed no knowledge of this but promised to look into the matter.
