Stating that 40 lakh people are facing hardships due to unemployment problem in Telangana, the opposition Congress party has demanded an unemployment emergency in the state.
AICC spokesperson Dasoju Sravan Kumar said Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao should consider concrete interventions to address and resolve the unemployment problem.
He also urged the Chief Minister to set up a high-level task force with various national-level industrialists, academicians, intellectuals, strategists, policy makers to formulate a strategy with specific task policies to deal with the unemployment which is plaguing the Telangana society. He recalled that such a task force was set up by the Kiran Kumar Reddy government in undivided Andhra Pradesh.
"Since, this is a social issue, an emergency all-party meeting should be held with all political parties," the Congress leader said and demanded that each unemployed youth should be provided with an unemployment allowance of Rs 3,016 a month by as promised in 2018 assembly elections by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
"Skill Development Centres should be set up in each mandal centre in collaboration with the Central Government and job fairs should be organised in collaboration with private sector companies to provide employment to the youth, employment opportunities and training,"
Stating that there are lakhs of applications pending in SC, ST, BC, Minority and MBC corporations, he demanded for immediate disbursement of self-employment loans so that they can stand on their feet.
The Congress also demanded to bring a statutory Act to ensure that 95 per cent of jobs reserved for locals in the private sector too. He also made several other demands, including ex-gratia of Rs one crore to the 70 field assistants who died after being dictatorially terminated from the service causing serious distress and also suggested releasing the full salary to them for two years.
Sravan Kumar said the Telangana government failed to create new jobs and instead the existing jobs were blown away. The government laid off a total of 52,515 employees, including 7651 field assistants. He said 21,200 employees in Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, 1640 Nurses, 709 in Mission Bhagiratha, 315 in Horticulture, 16,400 Education Volunteers, 2000 Junior Panchayat Secretaries, Social Welfare and Education and 2,640 employees of Road Transport Corporation (RTC) were sacked.
In a letter addressed to the Chief Minister, he found fault with the chief minister for his announcement made in the Assembly that 90,000 jobs would be filled while the Bishwal Committee said that there were 1.91 lakh job vacancies in the government departments.
He also offered to help the government as a former professor of HRD, and also having worked in large companies, in various capacities in human resource development departments, in solving the unemployment problem.
