‘Fill up govt vacancies, create demand’

The Congress urged the Centre to fill up government vacancies to address the issues of unemployment and the lack of demand in the economy. Addressing reporters here in Friday, party spokesman Gourav Vallabh said the Government’s rhetoric of creating crores of jobs every year was without any ground results.

He said the economic outlook is bleak as the quarterly GDP numbers indicate a contraction of 23.9 per cent.

Spend on infrastructure

“I would like to bring to your attention that this doesn’t include numbers from the informal sector yet. “Once incorporated, these numbers will tell a tale far frightening,” he said.

He asked the Centre to boost household and private spend and demand by increasing infrastructure spend and by creating sustainable job opportunities- both in the rural and urban areas.

“With a labour force of 42.8 crore where 3.6 crore are unemployed, employment generation should be the top priority of the government at the moment. Rural economy that was the only bright spot in the Indian economy currently has seen jobs dwindling in August,” Vallabh said.

Gaps in filling vacancies

He said the issue is two-fold. “On one hand the government has been preposterously incompetent in creating jobs both in the urban and rural economy, but what’s more bizarre is the apathetic approach by the NDA government towards honouring the fulfilment of vacancies,” he said.

Citing the case of Railway Recruitment Board (RRB), he said, though numerous notifications for vacancies were issued, virtually no action has been taken. After close to nine months, the RRB has not come out with a joining date and not even the appointment letters for the tests conducted to recruit technicians. “The number of vacancies that are to be filled is 64,371,” he said.

In vacancies in Group D, he said there is no visibility into the examination date after 18 months.

“The RRB has collected close to ₹500 crore through the examination fee and the hopes of close to 1.16 crore applicants are linked to these 1.03 lakh vacancies. What is the RRB waiting for?” he asked.

“The burden of government’s incompetence should not fall on the shoulders of our youth. Mind you, most of the aspirants of these examinations do not come from very well-to-do backgrounds. With 2.15 lakh unfulfilled vacancies, the hope of 2.15 lakh households has been destroyed as well,” he said.

“When increasing demand in the economy should have been your focus and lakhs of jobs could have been added to the economy, why have there been no proactive efforts to expedite this timeline? Was it ill-intended or ill-executed?,” he asked.

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