Minister for Works, Naeem Akhtar on behalf of Finance Minister, informed the House that 88040 unemployed youth are registered with various District Employment and Counselling Centres of the State till ending 2017. He, however, said that the registration is voluntary and the figure may be higher.Replying to a question by Mian Altaf Ahmad, the Minister said that the government has taken number of initiatives for providing employment to unemployed qualified youth in Government as well as in private sector. He said the Government has adopted a policy to fast track the recruitment in Government departments for filling up of non-gazetted posts borne on the establishment of any department or service of the Government and such gazetted posts as may be notified from time to time. He said that under special recruitment policy, it is obligatory on the recruiting agencies viz JKPSC and JKSSB to complete the selection process of already referred vacancies in a time bound manner. He added that JKPSC has made 3290 selections and JKSSB 19583 in last three years.
The Minister said that with reference to private sector, the State as well as the Central governments have taken number of initiatives to address the problem through entrepreneurship and skill development. He said “A number of self-employment schemes are being implemented by the labour and Employment Department including Seed Capital fund Scheme (SCFS); Youth Start-up Loan Scheme (YSLS); National Minority Development Finance Corporation (NMDFC); Women Entrepreneurship Programme (WEP); and Self Help Group of Engineers Scheme.”Mr Ali Mohammad Sagar, Mr. Usman Majid, Mr Mubarak Gul, M Y Tarigami, Altaf Ahmad Wani, Hakim Mohammad Yasin, Javed Ahmad Rana raised supplementaries to the main question.