When Captain Amarinder Singh started his election campaign in 2016, he wooed the youth with the slogan of “ghar ghar rozgar (one job a family)”.
The Congress followed it up by announcing a slew of job-oriented schemes, including Apni Gaddi Apna Rozgar, Harra (Green) Tractor Scheme and Yaari Enterprises, among other populist promises in its manifesto and was swept to power.
An uphill task at the outset, the Congress government fell short of expectations on job creation. Finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal, who holds the charge of employment generation, failed to allocate funds for starting job creation programmes.
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Barring the Apni Gaddi Apna Rozgar scheme, for which the government signed up with cab aggregators Uber and Ola, other promises, including an interim unemployment allowance of Rs 2,500 per month, are on paper. The employment generation department is working to play the role of a “facilitator” instead by organising job fairs in association with technical education and other departments to bring job seekers and employers under one roof.
{{/usCountry}}Barring the Apni Gaddi Apna Rozgar scheme, for which the government signed up with cab aggregators Uber and Ola, other promises, including an interim unemployment allowance of Rs 2,500 per month, are on paper. The employment generation department is working to play the role of a “facilitator” instead by organising job fairs in association with technical education and other departments to bring job seekers and employers under one roof.
{{/usCountry}}At the first mega job fair at Mohali in September last year, 27,500 aspirants got jobs. The department has held more fairs. “A web portal has been started. Besides thousands of aspirants, 2,000 employers from private sector have posted 56,000 jobs. Job matching on the portal is working well. When we act as facilitator, there is job creation,” says secretary, employment generation and technical education, Bhawna Garg.
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The department is in the process of creating a mechanism to make the job portal a common source for information.
Shiromani Akali Dal senior vice-president Daljit Singh Cheema has dismissed this strategy. “Jobs being offered at fairs have been part of the routine recruitment or campus placement by private companies and institutions since long. The government is misleading everyone. It has actually taken away jobs by shutting down two power plants and hundreds of sewa kendras,” he said.
There have been instances of job aspirants complaining of low salaries by private companies. A department official, however, said salaries are market-driven, depending on the job profile, experience and qualifications.