Dole to jobless: Dormant REE comes alive

THE REGIONAL Employment Exchange (REE), which had lost its popularity due to its failure to provide job opportunities in the government sector to unemployed youths, is once again hitting the spotlight.

THE REGIONAL Employment Exchange (REE), which had lost its popularity due to its failure to provide job opportunities in the government sector to unemployed youths, is once again hitting the spotlight.

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The REE has been made the nodal authority for implementing the decision of the State government with regard to giving allowance to unemployed graduates.
Through a notification, the State government has empowered the REE for entertaining applications from the unemployed graduate youths for disbursing unemployment allowance to them .

The new order will turn the “forgotten” office into a centre of attraction for unemployed graduate youths.

Following the orders, the exchange is humming with administrative activities. Hundreds of graduate unemployed youths visit the exchange to find out the procedure of applying for the allowance.

There are about 27,000 graduate unemployed youths registered with the exchange who are likely to get the unemployment allowance.

However, there were certain confusions about disbursement of scholarships to the youths. But recently the State government cleared all doubts about the beneficiaries of the scheme by refusing to pay unemployment allowance to the graduates who were still pursuing higher studies.

So far, it was believed that each student who was a graduate would be eligible for the allowance.

Regional employment officer AK Singh said that according to the government order, the allowance would be given to those who were within the age group of 21 to 35, were unemployed and had registered themselves with the employment exchange by February 28, 2006.

Only the candidates fulfilling these basic conditions could get the benefit of the unemployment allowance. In the case of reserved classes, the age limit was relaxed by five years, he added.

Besides this, the applicants would also have to furnish an original certificate confirming their place of settlement, certified copy of the mark-sheet of high school examination, an affidavit, identity card of the employment exchange, mark-sheets of BA and MA course , name of the bank and the account number to which the cheque could be remitted and a relevant certificate if they fell under reserved category.

The last date of receiving the application has been fixed as June 10.