Unemployment in Jammu double than in Valley

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 15

Woes of the educated unemployed youth of the Jammu province are increasing with every passing day as their figure is more than double compared to the number in the Kashmir valley.

The figures was released by Jammu For India (JFI), a recently formed socio-political organisation. The figures were released after 50 unemployed youths called on JFI convener Hari Om to narrate their woes.

Figures on non-gazetted employees have shown that the civil secretariat, seat of power in the state, continues to be dominated by people from the Kashmir valley with a whopping 73.67 per cent.

Employees from the Jammu region comprise 26.3 per cent while the figure of people from Ladakh is the worst as only 0.68 per cent from the cold desert have employment at the civil secretariat.

JFI convener Hari Om stated that the unemployment rate in Kashmir was less than 30 per cent compared to 69.75 per cent in the Jammu province, which could be easily verified from Assembly records. He said of the nearly 4.5 lakh employees working in government and semi-government establishments, including corporations, in Jammu and Kashmir, only 25 per cent were from Jammu.

The share of Jammu in the Class IV category in the civil secretariat was around 110 employees (29.48 per cent) while Kashmir had a share of 260 (70.52 per cent), claimed Prof Hari Om.

He said the share of Jammu among gazetted positions was negligible and almost all gazetted positions were held by employees from Kashmir.

He asserted that according to figures obtained from employment exchanges, the number of unemployed youths from Jammu was more than thrice compared to the figure in the Kashmir valley.

He said Jammu had 20,000 unemployed technocrats and Kashmir less than 5,000. He held the Centre responsible for the prevailing discontent in Jammu province as well as alienation of the region.