People's Democracy

Withdraw New Recruitment Policy: CPI(M)

THE CPI(M)’s Jammu & Kashmir state secretary and Kulgam MLA, Mohd Yousuf Tarigami, has strongly criticized the new recruitment policy announced by the government recently and cautioned against its implementation.

Addressing a press conference at Jammu on November 4, he said that the policy was yet another blow to the job-aspiring educated youth who are already disillusioned by the anti-youth policies of the state government. Not much has been done by the successive governments to address the alarming unemployment problem and redress the grievances of educated youth in the state.

According to Tarigami, the policies and programmes aimed at containing the unemployment, initiated by the central and state governments, are quite inadequate and not producing satisfactory results. Providing one lakh jobs to the youth of the state under the prime minister’s employment package was given much hype but its launch is still awaited without any rhyme or reason. Likewise the Sher-e-Kashmir Employment Policy and other self-employment schemes in operation are proving ineffective in attracting the educated youth. Public sector and private sector units, that could be instrumental in providing jobs to the youth, are either suffering from sickness or are in effect non-existent. The necessity of formulation of a long term and sustainable employment policy was felt seriously to ensure timely recruitments, revive the public sector units and boost the job guaranteeing sectors in the state, besides assuring attractive incentive to the job aspirants under employment oriented schemes.

The CPI(M) leader found it much astonishing and unexpected that instead of pooling the resources and exploring the possibilities of job creation,  the government has resorted  to a much harsh employment policy. This would provide for reduction in the salaries of intending employees to just 50 and 75 per cent of basic pay in the first two and then the next three years. He asked how one could justify the government’s announcement of such an anti-youth policy. The latter has deepened the sense of disillusionment and distress among the educated youth. On the one hand, new incumbents in government jobs shall be paid meagrely and, on the other, their service tenure shall be reduced by five odds years, Tarigami said, adding that the government has already done away with the full pension scheme since January 2010. He said one could not expect an effective and efficient role from employees in the administration and the delivery system in such a situation, and questioned what the government wanted to achieve by targeting the young lot. There were other means to save the state exchequer from the unwarranted expenditures as large sums are being incurred on unproductive plans and the luxuries for those who are at the helm of political, executive and bureaucratic set-up in the state. Resource constraints and financial implications are unnecessarily being cited as the ground for implementation of the new recruitment policy by the government. 

Terming the youth as vital ingredients of economic prosperity and overall development, the CPI(M) leader said the educated youth of the state are left with only hope of livelihood --- government jobs, because the private sector in the state provides only limited jobs and those too mainly to technocrats and professionals. Educated youth and students are reasonably and justifiably taking to the streets to express their increasing resentment against the new recruitment policy. Tarigami demanded that this policy, which has been announced in a hurry and without consultations at appropriate forums, should be withdrawn forthwith. Instead, the government should come up with a youth friendly policy that could retrieve from disillusionment our youth who have been the worst sufferers due to a number of reasons. The government should also desist from its unworkable and anti-people policies and concentrate on resource mobilisation and better exploitation of human capital, instead of depending on large scale central funding, he added.