Tribune News ServiceLudhiana, December 5
The PAU Students Association and the Researchers Association have urged the government to fill hundreds of vacant posts in various departments and extension posts of the university at the earliest. Mr Sandip Mann and Mr Kanwaljit Sandhu, presidents of the student bodies, pointed out that India being an agrarian nation needed research, development and innovation in agriculture. With this objective, the country produced more than 5,000 agricultural graduates and postgraduates every year. Lot of expenses were incurred to train them but once they completed their studies, they found employment avenues lacking.
Unemployment had led to frustration apart from an increase in the number of professionally qualified youth who had either shifted from their parent discipline or working in sales and marketing divisions in private companies.
Presently, more than 250 posts of ADO, 40 posts of Horticulture Development Officer and hundreds of allied posts in organisations like the Punjab Warehousing Corporation, PUNSUP, and Punjab Agro were lying vacant. Many teaching, research and extension posts in the PAU and its research stations were lying vacant, some of which were being abolished.
Some of the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree holders in the discipline of agriculture were offered temporary arrangement for a few months under different research projects schemes funded by different agencies, including the World Bank but this was not a solution to the problem of unemployment as after the termination of the projects, they were again unemployed. In many cases, they had crossed the eligibility limits for Assistant Professor or equivalent posts.
Recently, the Indian Council of Agricultural (ICAR), had increased the age of retirement from 60 to 62 years which would harm the interests of agricultural graduates/postgraduates.
