Engineering techies held before CM's foundation-laying for state secretariat

VELAGAPUDI (Guntur): The police arrested half a dozen engineering graduates in the run up to the foundation-laying by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for the temporary secretariat here in the core capital region. They gathered at the venue to submit a petition to the CM with a request to implement the government's promise to provide employment to the local jobless youths with bachelor degrees in Engineering in the CRDA.The police removed all of them from the place and shifted to Thulluru police station on security grounds.
Thulluru SI Ravi Babu said the police resorted to preventive arrests involving the job-seeking youths in view of security reasons and let them off later. The arrests triggered massive protests as a large number of local people staged a sit-in at the police station at Thulluru demanding the release of the youths.
According to B. Lenin, vice president of the Rajadhani Yuvajana Sangham, under whose leadership the unemployed youths courted arrest, the Capital Region Development Authority (CRDA) picked up 113 Engineering graduates from 29 capital villages for a six-month training programme held at Echcharla in Srikakulam district under the aegis of the Andhra Pradesh Skill Development Corporation with a promise for placements in its offices and in capital construction.
hey were not even allegedly given stiffened in full during the training period and training in all disciplines mentioned in the schedule. Lenin said the resources persons from the skill development corporation gave training only in soft skills even as they were supposed to equip the participants with the basics in the core skills such as java and dotnet.
The CRDA was alleged to have denied placements to the youths on completion of training, ignoring the assurances given by Municipal Minister P. Narayana and Agriculture Minister Prattipati Pulla Rao.
Lenin urged the government to take steps for placing all the trained graduates with civil and mechanical engineering background in construction of the capital city complexes and the ones equipped with soft skills in the CRDA offices located in 26 villages in line with its promise.
Meanwhile, the CM took the security agencies by surprise by coming by road even as the police in large numbers threw up a security ring around a make-shift helipad nearby. Even as Naidu emerged from his four-wheeler, the police top brass rushed from the helipad to receive him.