Srinagar, July 26: The government of India on Monday gave an evasive answer on a query by a Member Parliament whether around five lakh people have lost jobs in J&K since 5 August 2019.

Responding to a bunch of questions by Indian Union Muslim League’s K.Navaskan in Lok Sahba who among others had also sought to know if the number vacant government posts in Jammu & Kashmir(J&K) stood at more than 80,000, Minister Of State for Labour and Employment, Rameswar Teli said that as per information received from Government of Jammu & Kashmir through Ministry of Home Affairs, the J&K Government has constituted an Accelerated Recruitments Committee (ARC) with the aim to identify vacancies for being filled up on immediate basis and finalizing the procedure to be followed at all levels.

“The Committee in the Phase-I, identified ten thousand Class-IV vacancies across various departments out of which 8575 have already been put to advertisement by the Board under the provisions of Jammu and Kashmir Appointment to Class-IV (Special Recruitment) Rules, 2020,” Teli said in the reply.

As part of Phase-II of Accelerated Recruitments Drive, he said, the Committee has identified 12,379 Gazetted and Non-Gazetted vacancies. Apart from ARC, he said, 3694 other Gazetted and Non-Gazetted vacancies have also been identified for recruitment.

“In the Union Territory of J&K post August, 2019, rigorous efforts are being made to provide jobs to unemployed youth both in public and private sectors. The Government of J&K has taken (various) steps to provide employment,” he said.

Among others, he said that  under Mission Youth, Rs 200 crore has been provisioned for 2021- 22 to provide for holistic development of youth of J&K.

“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 Transport sector,” he said.

Under Back to Village programme, he said, over 17,000 unemployed youth have been provided financial assistance for self employment ventures through J&K Bank under priority sector lending.

“Under the “Himayaat” scheme 20,827 candidates have completed their training and 7076 candidates have been placed in job.”

Labour and Employment Department of J&K Government is implementing the self  employment schemes for employment generation for unemployed educated youth of UT including “Seed Capital Fund Scheme”;  Youth Startup Loan Scheme; Women Entrepreneurship Programme while Vocational Education is being emphasized with establishment of vocational labs in High and Higher Secondary schools for improving employability of students and also in becoming entrepreneurs, he said.

“School Education Department of J&K Government has launched an Online Caree r Portal (in phase-I covering two districts Udhampur and Ganderbal) wherein more than 30,000 students have registered their interest in selecting their future goals after passing class 12th, besides, introducing new technical subjects in schools with modern requirement which shall enhance the employability among the educated youth,” he said.

He said as per 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 (ps+ss) was 6.7 per cent which is much lower than many other States. gns