Jammu : Questioning the claims of the government, the Congress party has hit out at the BJP for making false claims on employment, while the reality is that J&K has the highest unemployment in the last 45 years and has the second highest unemployment rate in the country under the BJP regime.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, AICC national media coordinator Dolly Sharma and AICC media coordinator in-charge Jammu Onika Mehrotra said that Jammu and Kashmir faces the worst unemployment as there are around 25 lakh unemployed youth seeking jobs.
Countering the false claims of Union Minister Anurag Thakur and LG Manoj Sinha, Dolly Sharma said that according to PLFS data, Jammu and Kashmir is at second position in the country in terms of unemployment today with an unemployment rate of 28.2 percent.
Our young sisters are facing the worst unemployment, as their unemployment rate is 48.6 percent which is the highest in the country.
From 2019 till now, 65 percent of government posts are lying vacant in various government departments, while there were several recruitment scams in the UT during the period.
The youth have been protesting on roads for jobs and scams in the recruitment during the period while presenting the series of clippings from media reports and said that the government had been suppressing their voice.
The promises made by the Govt. especially the UT administration with the youths after downgrading the historical state into UT proved false. She reminded that the the Governor in August 2019 had assured 50 thousand jobs to the youths in three months but even after five years the Govt.’s own claim is not more than forty thousands, which falsifies their claims.
Around 60,000 daily wage workers have been forced to work for Rs 300 per day for the last 15 years and above as the BJP failed to honour its promise of regularizing their services and their conditions have not changed even today. The youth who had hopes of getting a permanent job in various government departments are today being pushed into the pit of uncertain contract-based employment, with no job security.
A large number of youth including women working in different departments as contractual, adhoc, temporary, anganwadi, asha workers, mid day meal workers are meagerly paid with no certainty of future.
Dolly Sharma and Onika Mehrotra questioned the claims of the LG Manoj Sinha about corruption free administration and said that in 2022, the selection of 1200 Sub- inspectors, 1000 Account Assistants and 1300 other posts were cancelled besides serious allegations of irregularities in fire and emergency services which indicates the level of corruption and the dreams of over 97ooo youths who had appeared in the JK SSB exam were dashed to the ground.
They also referred to the lack of recruitment for Dental Surgeons for the last 13 years while several youths engaged under REZ, REK, NYC and others are waiting regularization as per schemes of their engagements.
Onika Mehrotra said that BJP had claimed that there shall be no dearth of jobs after the abrogation Article 370 and there shall be revolution in the industrialization but all claims fall flat and rather after the removal of protection for jobs, land and natural resources in 2019, the youth have been facing difficulties in getting jobs as approximately 12000 domicile certificates have been issued to people who are not natives of Jammu and Kashmir.
On the question of LG’s claim of the welfare of people , JKPCC Senior Vice President and Chief Spokesperson Ravinder Sharma said that under his regime the old age, handicapped And widows were not scared and were forced to hold protests on roads for meagre pension, power tax, smart meters, water tax, eviction of poor people from land, demolishing of their shelters and various other anti-people decisions were taken and people are making hue and cries but nobody listened to them, so he should better resign.
Countering BJP’s attack on congress for seat sharing with NC, Sharma questioned BJP, what was common between BJP and PDP when it shared power with the latter and also with NC when they were part of NDA alliance.
He alleged that BJP is in league with several separatist forces in Kashmir for the sake of power.
Kapil Singh, Neeraj Gupta, Rajiv Saraf, Deepanshu Bhat, Randeep Parihar, Ranjodh Singh were also present in the press conference.
