Jobless figure rises in Sundargarh

Amid mounting unemployment, resentment is brewing among the job-seekers in the industrial and mining district of Sundargarh. While the official figure of the jobless is 71,775, the actual could be anything beyond 1.5 lakh.

The district has witnessed mushrooming of at least three dozens of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and more are in the offing with the government policy to set up ITIs in all 17 blocks.

President of Unemployed ITI Students Association (UITISA) and Sundargarh district unit of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) Raj Kishore Pradhan said the district has around 20,000 skilled job-seekers including 8,000 ITI degree holders and diploma engineers and the rest are unskilled workers.

He claimed more than 3,000 ITI passouts each year are only adding to the number of jobless.

Pradhan said the employment exchange office has been reduced to a farce as in the past two years a meagre 299 youths got jobs, courtesy various Central government agencies. He said it smacks of a collusion among the employment officials and local private industries as the errant industries were never punished or served notices for violation of government instruction to give preferential employment to local job-seekers.

An ITI passout Pradip Gour claimed in the past one decade he never received any call letter from the employment office.  Protesting the grim scenario, the DYFI last week held a demonstration in front of the employment office and sent a memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik through  District Employment Officer HC Sabar.

Sources said the local manufacturing plants in the past ‘deliberately’ ignored the local youths, and in the present circumstances not much hope is left as all the private industries are faced with the survival question.

Pradhan was also critical of Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) management. He said it is unthinkable that in RSP’s Rs 12,000-crore modernisation and expansion projects, nearly 27,000 contract workers from outside Odisha are employed at the cost of the local job-seekers. He also questioned the government guideline to absorb 90 per cent of the unskilled workers of the district.