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Almost 7.5 million people are currently registered with various government-run employment exchanges in Uttar Pradesh.
These rather nondescript exchanges had come under limelight after the Samajwadi Party came to power in March 2012, promised unemployment dole of Rs 1,000 per month to the registered.
However, following massive drubbing in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling dispensation has now discontinued the populist scheme by making no fresh budgetary allocation for the current financial year.
As a result, the swarms of unemployed youth have largely vanished from the 75 employment exchanges in the state. Yet, the current count of the registered stands at 7.5 million and counting, albeit at a much slower pace due to the absence of dole.
To facilitate jobs to such large number of unemployment youth, the employment and training department has been organising job fairs at the exchange level to bring private companies and job-seekers together.
Since 2012, over 46,000 registered youth had landed jobs in these job fairs, as large number of private companies — both from the manufacturing and services sector — participate in these events.
According to statistics, 234, 594 and 230 job fairs were organised in the state employment exchanges during 2012, 2013 and 2014, wherein 8,201, 24,579 and 12,468 registered youth landed jobs, respectively. Besides, 902 and 490 youth were placed directly by the exchanges during 2013 and 2014, respectively.
These exchanges operate under the employment and training, labour department of the state government. The fairs cater to the youth with educational qualifications of class V passed to engineering, management graduates, besides the technically-skilled.
The exchanges are making optimum use of social media platforms, such as Facebook and WhatsApp to publicise job fairs and to shed the negative image associated with government departments. Meanwhile, the government is mulling to make it mandatory for the government departments and private companies to inform exchanges about vacancies and its advertisement in newspapers.
