In a bid to counter social agitations led by youngsters complaining about lack of jobs and also create a positive image ahead of the assembly polls scheduled in December this year, the Gujarat government has launched a drive to hold mega job at district levels to bring job seekers and private companies on a common platform to conduct recruitments.
In last two years, Gujarat has witnessed a number of social agitations and castes mobilizations on the issues of quotas in education and jobs and distressed agriculture and lack of employment opportunities open market.
The Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel and Alpesh Thakor, who runs an umbarella agitation for backward communities, have been raising the issue of joblessness in the state, which attracts high investments in industrial sector.
The pressure from the agitations and social unrests forced the government to expedite its recruitment drive for hiring more than 60,000 people for various categories like police, teachers, revenue clerks and subordinate staff for government departments. Currently, the government is in the process of massive recruitment to fill up almost 65,000 vacancies in its departments.
"Total 68,000 people will be recruited in the government before the assembly elections," a close aide of Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani told The Hindu, adding, "CM himself monitors the recruitment process and follows up with agencies concerned."
In the recently held mega job fairs, as many as 2,184 job providers participated and offered jobs to 1,09,520 candidates out of 1,42,970 applicants, said Gujarat Chief Secretary Dr JN Singh.
"We organized job fairs in 12 clusters covering 33 districts in the state. The exercise will be held regularly," principal secretary, labour and employment, Rajiv Gupta said, adding, "Total, 56,742 candidates were offered jobs in manufacturing sector and 52,778 candidates were employed in services sector."
“As per the official figures of 5th Annual Employment/Unemployment Survey by the Centre, Gujarat is having the lowest unemployment ratio per 1,000, which is 0.9 per cent. That means only 9 out of every 1,000 persons in Gujarat are unemployed,” Dr Singh said, claiming that Gujarat has the least employment rate in the country.
However, youth leaders like Hardik and Alpesh have been alleging that despite high rate of investments, Gujarat has failed to create jobs. "More than 50 lakh people in the state are either jobless or underemployed. There is massive unemployment in the state but the government is not admitting it," Mr Hardik Patel recently told The Hindu.
Concurring with him, Alpesh Thakor said jobs in Gujarat are taken away by outsiders because the government has not enforced its labour policy which prescribes all factories to hire 85 % locals.
On Thursday, Mr Thakor and hundreds of his supporters were detained by the cops outside the Tata Nano factory in Sanand where they had gathered to lock the factory for allegedly not giving jobs to local youths.
