DEHRADUN: With over 56,000 vacancies in various state government departments, Uttarakhand state government seems in no condition to fill them up given the bad financial health of the state.
Even as the Chief Minister has been instructing state government officials to fill up the posts, insiders say that 100% recruitment for all the vacancies is not possible.
"If the government decides and recruits people for the 56,474 vacancies across the departments, the state cannot take this much financial strain at once," said a senior government official on the condition of anonymity.
Total of 54.47% of the budget goes to pay up interest on debt, salaries and allowances to state government employees and to cover expenses of the government and its departments.
Economic experts painted out that the delay in filling up vacancies will push the state back on development index due to lack of workforce needed to push infrastructure, health, education and other aspects of development in the hill state.
BK Joshi, Dehradun based economist commenting on the issue said, "Vacancies in such a scale means absence of required workforce which effects the place of the work state government is doing. The only way out is to deal with fiscal deficit in coming years and fill up these vacancies fast."
Out of total vacant positions, 2370 are in coveted 'Group A: which includes posts of gazetted officers while in group 'B' total 5239 posts are vacant.
Maximum posts- 37547 are vacant in group 'C' category which happens to be clerical posts mostly. A majority of youth is eyeing these posts expecting state government to announce recruitment soon.
Dinesh Kothari, a graduate from Haldwani said, "The government has responsibility towards people and should fill the posts. Youth are already plagued with unemployment and further delay is going to prove detrimental."
A report by Uttarakhand state government revealed that youth unemployment rate (Age group 15-29 years) in Uttarakhand has doubled since financial year 2004-05. In year 2004-05, youth unemployment rate in the hill state stood 6% which doubled to 13.3% during the present times.
The report report titled 'Uttarakhand Human Development Report 2019 which pegs the youth unemployment rate in Uttarakhand at 13.2 percent was released in December 2019 has collated data till year 2017. This is three times the adult unemployment rate of 4.2% pointing towards the increasing proportion of unemployed youth in the state.