No place for the jobless

Employment exchanges

Only 0.08 percent registered youths landed jobs in last 10 years

By Our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, June 28: An employment exchange is an agency of the government that assists job seekers. Well, really?

If statistics are to be believed, employment exchanges in Assam have been of little help to unemployed youths in landing jobs.

In the last ten years, only an utterly measly 0.08 per cent of the registered youths in the employment exchanges of the State maged to get placements.

Since 2005 to August 2014, a total of 51,95,735 youths had registered themselves in the employment exchanges located in the district headquarters. Of them, only 4,548 could get jobs through the exchange.

The general impression about employment exchanges in the State is that they have gradually become redundant in the modern economy. People no longer prefer to go to exchanges because their functioning is very archaic. It takes months for the paperwork to get cleared and even longer for job-seekers to actually get placed.

Some say employment exchanges have failed to reinvent themselves and fulfil the aspirations of job-seekers in present day context. They lack the efficiency to match jobs to job-seekers.

To register themselves in the exchanges, an applicant needs to fill up a form and submit it to the District Employment Exchange along with all the necessary educatiol qualification certificates. After the verification, a registration card is issued to the applicant. The registration is renewed after every three years.

Even the government is not bothered. While in some government job application forms there is an 'optiol' column seeking the candidate's employment exchange registration number, some do not even have the option.

Says Babul Baruah, chief advisor of Sodou Axom Nibonua Parishad, "The employment exchanges have become more or less defunct. The exchanges have three primary functions - occupation research, vocatiol guidance and to provide employment market information. There is also a provision through which the exchanges can impart skill development training to the youths for human resource utilization."

"But it seems that now, the only function of the exchange is to register the youths," Baruah said.

He claimed that the State government has even issued a notification stating that placements for 3rd and 4th grade category jobs would be done through employment exchanges and not by open advertisements. "But as these recruitments have become political… no department follows the rule," he alleged.