Job fair leaves youth disappointed

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, November 14

Meagre salary packages ranging between Rs 8,000-Rs 12,000 per month fail to attract unemployed youth of the region during the second day of the two-day 'Campus to Corporate' job fair organised here today under the Ghar Ghar Rozgar scheme of the ruling Congress government in the state.

Students and other youth who had come to seek jobs said most of the companies only took their resumes and did not assure them of jobs in their firms. Also, most of the students denied to work in other states or the other cities of the state due to less salaries being offered by the firms. The average cost to company packages offered were limited to only Rs 2-3 lakh per annum. Only a company came with the package of Rs 6.70 lakh.

Vicky Singh (22) and his classmates, all students of mechanical engineering, said besides Tech Mahindra, no other company was there for mechanical students.

Sonalika Tractors was available, but only DAVIET students were there for its interviews and its name was also not there on the list of companies invited, they added.

Vicky said: "These job fairs did not prove to be much fruitful as the companies only took our resumes and we did not receive any call from them."

He added that in the previous job fair organised by the Captain Amainder Singh-led Congress government, his cousin was offered a Kolkata-based job with a salary of only Rs 10,000. However, he left the job after a month as it was tough to survive on such a meagre amount. A group of commerce students from Doaba College were also found disappointed as none of the companies assured them offer letters.

On the second day, 27 companies were invited to offer jobs to the youth in the non-technical job fair that was conducted by the district administration in collaboration with the DAV Institute of Engineering and Technology (DAVIET). Out of 183 students shortlisted on the first day of the fair, only 61 students were from other colleges and the remaining were from DAVIET.

Meanwhile, most of the unemployed youth preferred sales and field jobs offered by firms such as OLA and Zomato. They preferred flexible job hours, including part-time, full-time and weekend hours, offered by these mobile phone application-based online firms.

In-addition, Lok Sabha MP Chaudhary Santokh Singh said the objective behind conducting the job fair was to offer jobs to around 4,000 jobless youth of the state.