Employment wing suffers neglect

HYDERABAD: The reorganisation and renaming of the department of employment and training as department of career guidance and capacity building, and the merger of the training wing with the technical education department are yet to be completed. The government more than a year ago had decided to re-orient the functioning of the employment exchanges from registering and providing jobs to imparting career guidance. A senior official blames the government for the sorry state of affairs of the department. Meanwhile, the registration for jobs in the employment exchanges continues, with approximately 2,79,000 registrations in the year 2002 alone, out of which 81,000 were women. This adds to the 25 lakh odd registrations pending with the exchanges, out of which more than six lakh are women. The highest number of registrations for jobs in the year 2002 was from the backward districts of Chittoor, Karimnagar and Anantapur with 18,007, 12,310 and 15,866 respectively. The number of vacancies notified in the year 2002 are 14,733 out of which 8,047 were formal notifications that are related to appointments done on compassionate grounds. The actual regular appointments are only 6,686. Incidentally, out of the total registrations, nearly 60 per cent applicants have general education qualifications and 40 per cent pertain to professional and technical education. The proposal to set up an Overseas Employment Bureau on the lines of the bureau in Tamil Nadu is still pending, inspite of government granting permission to officers to study the system in the neighbouring state. The plans of the department to go online for registrations has also not taken off the ground as yet.