Bhubaneswar: Even as debate over the two year performance of the Naveen Patnaik government continues, the failure to achieve the announcement made in the 2014 poll manifesto of BJD to create employment opportunities from the opposition political parties.
While the job fairs at the district level launched at the district level with much fanfare has been a complete failure, the state government has also failed to create jobs in the industrial and other sectors.
Though more than 70 job fairs were organised at the district level, the placement of unemployed youths has been disappointing with less than 1000 getting job offers. Though the BJD had promised to create 20 lakh employment opportunities in the state, the number of unemployed in the state crossed the 10 lakh mark.
The manifesto had announced that the BJD government will introduce ‘Chief Minister Employment Generation Scheme’. The scheme envisaged that a minimum of 150 youths from each gram panchayat will be imparted necessary skill upgradation training and subsequent loan and subsidy linkage, The New Indian Express reported.
Though the state government announced such a scheme in 2014 soon after the BJD returned to power, no follow up action has been taken in this regard so far. Besides, creation of Odisha Youth Innovation Fund was announced to assist young entrepreneurs in incubating new business ideas.
One of the major announcement was to scale up and expedite recruitment in all fields with special focus on teachers and GP level functionaries. However, functioning in the schools have been paralysed as more than 40,000 post of teachers remain vacant. Besides, vacancy of field level functionaries in all departments have affected implementation of schemes.
Leader of the Opposition Narasingh Mishra said both the Centre and state government have betrayed the youths as neither of them have fulfilled promises made at the time of election. Describing the umeployment situation in the state as alarming, Mishra said lakhs of people are leaving for neighbouring states in search of jobs.