CHANDIGARH: The Punjab government on Saturday announced it would provide 25,000 government jobs in various departments, boards, and corporations and also decided to present a vote on account for three months in the ongoing assembly session.
Announcing these decisions after the first meeting of the newly-constituted cabinet, which was sworn in earlier in the day, chief minister Bhagwant Mann said “this historic decision would open new vistas of employment for the youth by providing the jobs to them in the government through a transparent and merit-based mechanism.”
Out of the 25,000 jobs, 10,000 would be offered in various posts of the Punjab Police and the remaining 15,000 would be given in other departments, including boards and corporations.
“The process of advertisement and notification of these jobs would be initiated within a month. As promised before the election, job opportunities for Punjab’s youth will be the topmost priority of the Aam Aadmi Party government,” Mann said.
Unemployment was one of the main issues in the recently-concluded state assembly elections and the AAP had made it one if its major poll planks. Most of the voters said the jobless youth were feeding the drug problem, which in turn was driving parents to send their children abroad.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s latest unemployment report, over eight lakh people are unemployed in Punjab, with a big chunk constituting graduates. The report said over 16% of the workforce with graduate degrees and higher educational qualifications were unemployed.
The latest employment figures on the website of the Punjab Ghar Ghar Rozgar & Karobar Mission under the state’s Department of Employment Generation said more than 13.76 lakh had registered with the mission’s websites for employment, but there were only 10,223 government jobs available, 1,843 in the private sector.
The cabinet also cleared the presentation of supplementary demands for grants for 2021-22 to be presented in the assembly session. This decision would provide a budget for additional or excess expenditure incurred by various departments to liquidate the pending liabilities. The cabinet also approved the supplementary demands for grants for 2021-22.
It also gave its approval for the presentation of the statement of estimated expenditure (vote on account) from April 1 to June 30 for 2022-23.