Over 26,000 posts vacant in J&K govt, but process on to fill them: Centre

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 26

The government on Monday informed Lok Sabha that there existed a little over 26,000 vacant posts in the government of Jammu & Kashmir. It also said that a committee has been constituted to fill them up on “immediate basis” at all levels.

Responding to a written question relating to the issue, Minister of State (MoS) for Labour & Employment Rameswar Teli said, “As per information received from the government of Jammu & Kashmir through Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the UT administration has constituted an Accelerated Recruitments Committee (ARC) with the aim to identify vacancies for being filled up on immediate basis and finalising the procedure to be followed at all levels.”

The minister said the committee in the Phase-I has identified “10,000 Class-IV vacancies across various departments and out of which 8,575 have already been put to advertisement” by the Board “under the provisions of the Special Recruitment Rules, 2020”.

He said, “As part of Phase-II of Accelerated Recruitments Drive, the committee has identified 12,379 Gazetted and Non-Gazetted vacancies. Apart from ARC, 3,694 other Gazetted and Non-Gazetted vacancies have also been identified for recruitment.”

Moreover, the minister further asserted that in the UT of J&K, particularly after August 2019 “rigorous efforts are being made to provide jobs to unemployed youth both in public and private sectors”.

Noting that the J&K government has taken a number of steps to provide employment in the UT, the minister informed that under Mission Youth, Rs 200 crore has been provisioned for 2021-22 to provide for holistic development of youth.

“Under this initiative, a program called ‘MUMKIN’ has already been launched under which full financial assistance is being provided for setting up self-employment ventures in the transport sector. Under the Back to Village programme, over 17,000 unemployed youth have been provided financial assistance for self-employment ventures through J&K Bank under priority sector lending.”

Teli said similarly under the “Himayaat” scheme 20,827 candidates have completed their training and 7,076 candidates have been placed in job.

“The J&K’s Labour & Employment department is also implementing a number of self-employment schemes like seed capital fund, Youth Startup Loan, Women Entrepreneurship Programme and Vocational Education,” he said.  

“As per the results of Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) conducted during 2019-20 by National Statistical Office (NSO) under Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation, the unemployment rate in J&K (for all the age groups for all persons) on usual status basis was 6.7 per cent, which is much lower than many other states,” the minister said.

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