State to hold job fairs every three months to tackle unemployment

According to the officials of Labour Department, “The state government had planned to conduct job melas once in every three months in all the districts and the melas are focussed on getting employment for youth in the private sector. Labour department had allotted Rs 1.28 crore for the current year for conducting job melas.”

The unemployment rate in the state had witnessed a rising trend in the state. According to a survey by the labour bureau of the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment, released in 2017-18, the educated unemployment rate in the state stands at 6.2 and it is higher than some of the states such as Gujarat, Karnatakaand Telengana.

The state faced severe criticism for the unemployment rate and Opposition parties too raised the issue in the recently held Assembly session. Officials said that government had taken sincere efforts to reduce unemployment rate.

“The state is not entirely dependent upon public sector undertakings for providing employment to the youth and so it has started conducting private job melas from January, 2018. Till March, this year, 85,756 youth were placed in various private companies in the micro and mega job fairs conducted across the state,” said the officials.

The officials also said that in the same period, 3,948 youth were placed in various public sector companies. The private sector placement assistance cells have been set up in all the 37 employment offices across the state in 2012 and the duty of the placements cells is to bring the job seekers and employers on thesame platform.

The private job melas have been a huge success as youth who do not get placed are given training in the skills which they lag. “Most commonly found problem among the rural youth is the lack of communication skills and the placement cells give special training on communication skills and improve their placement opportunities,” said the officials.

The officials further said that special cells for registration and guidance on overseas employment have also been established in all the employment offices. The special employment cells, apart from identifying the overseas employer, also guarantees the credibility of the companies so that the youth do not get cheated in foreign countries,said the officials.