BHUBANESWAR: With the number of registered jobless people in Odisha crossing 32 lakh mark, the increasing unemployment has come to haunt the State Government.
The State Government launched the Chief Minister’s Employment Generation Scheme (CMEGS), a massive skill development initiative, in August, 2014 with an aim to hone skills of 11 lakh youths to make them employable.
Setting the target for five years, the Government promised to upgrade skills of at least 150 young men and women of each Gram Panchayat for making them employable.
While the Micro Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Department claimed to have created employment opportunities for 1,17,665 youths by end of December, 2015, there is no official data on the achievements of other Government departments.
“MSME’s achievement is against the target to generate employment for four lakh youths by 2019. The Department has successfully facilitated for setting up 38,545 enterprises by 2015,” sources in the Department said.
The performance of commercial banks operating in the State for providing skill training through Rural Self Employment Training Institute (RSETI) is equally disheartening.
The banks were given a target to provide skill training to 19,800 rural BPL youths in the current fiscal. The achievement of the banks by the end of September, 2015 was 5,857 which was 30 per cent of the target.
According to Employment and Technical Education and Training Department, over 32 lakh job aspirants have registered in various employment exchange offices of the State.
The State Government had provided jobs to 44,100 of the registered job seekers through employment exchanges in the last 15 years. They include 33,096 men and 11,004 women.
A recent review by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik revealed that about 36,000 posts are lying vacant in different departments at the field level. While proposals were submitted by different departments to fill up 20,902 posts, steps have been taken to fill up 515 posts.
The highest number of posts is lying vacant in the School and Mass Education Department. While the number of vacancy in primary schools is about 43,000, as many as 14,000 teacher posts are lying vacant in various Government and non-Government high schools.
Recently, the Chief Minister handed over joining letters to 137 assistant section officers (ASOs) at a function here and announced that 800 more such posts will be filled up soon.