No policy, state faces huge employment challenge

Arteev Sharma
Tribune News Service
Jammu, June 7

The state authorities do not have any employment policy to address the “serious challenge” of unemployment in Jammu and Kashmir.

What is more ironic is that the state authorities do not have the “real, sound and dependable database” of the exact number of unemployed educated and uneducated youth in the conflict-ridden state.

Apart from this, the much-touted “state policy on employment” — Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Policy for Youth (SKEWPY) — launched by the then NC-Congress coalition government on December 5, 2009, with an aim to provide jobs to unemployed educated youth of the state, has also remained “on hold” for the last four years allegedly on “political considerations”.

The SKEWPY envisaged to simultaneously and comprehensively address all issues relating to the gigantic problem of unemployment in a principled manner.

According to the state employment department, J&K had 82,395 registered unemployed educated and uneducated youth, apart from around two lakh unorganised workers and 55,000 youth registered under the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan scheme.

The department, however, at the same time, said the number of unemployed youth could be much higher as the process of registration with the employment department was voluntary and not mandatory.

“At bureaucratic levels, a lot of discussions on the problem of unemployment in the state have taken place, but we are yet to have a concrete and comprehensive employment policy to tackle this menace,” a senior official of the state employment department said.

The official said the SKEWPY policy, which was a dream scheme of the then Omar Abdullah-led government in 2009, had almost been abandoned as it was kept on hold on April 10, 2015, following the 2015-16 Budget announcements made by then Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu.

“Besides, the government had also kept on hold the processing of all cases under the J&K State Self-Employment Scheme. It was decided to bring a new scheme as a replacement of the SKEWPY, but nothing has been achieved so far,” said sources.

While the previous PDP-BJP coalition government had claimed that the voluntary service allowance under the SKEWPY paid to the educated unemployed youth would be utilised to build their entrepreneurial capacities for self-employment, the opposition National Conference had alleged that the scheme was abandoned because it carried the prefix ‘Sher-e-Kashmir’— attributed to Omar Abdullah’s grandfather and former Chief Minister of the state Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.

Previous plan on hold

• The much-touted “state policy on employment” — Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Policy for Youth (SKEWPY) — launched by the then NC-Congress coalition government on December 5, 2009, to provide jobs to youth of the state, has also remained “on hold” for the last four years, allegedly on “political considerations”
• The SKEWPY envisaged to simultaneously and comprehensively address all issues relating to the gigantic problem of unemployment in a principled manner

82,000 registered jobless youth

• According to the state employment department, J&K had 82,395 registered unemployed educated and uneducated youth, apart from around two lakh unorganised workers and 55,000 youth registered under the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan scheme
• The department, however, at the same time, says the number of unemployed youth can be much higher as the process of registration with the employment department is voluntary and not mandatory