Congress Takes On KCR On Rising Unemployment

Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy on Thursday warned the TRS government against the rising unemployment among the educated youth in the state and demanded that immediate steps be taken to resolve the crisis.

Addressing a public meeting in Chintagurthi village of Khammam district on Thursday, Reddy said that the TRS government had failed miserably in addressing the issue of rising unemployment.

Quoting a report on unemployment in India prepared by the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), the TPCC chief said that Telangana had the third-highest level of unemployment among graduates in India.

Pointing out that the unemployment rate in Telangana between May and August 2017 stood at 18.59%, Reddy alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao was not keen enough in dealing with the crisis.

Reddy claimed that there were nearly 30 lakh unemployed graduates in Telangana. Of them, nearly 18.27 lakh had already enrolled themselves with the Telangana State Public Service Commission, he said.

"The desperation of these young graduates to get a job can be understood from the fact that the TSPSC website had over 44.50 lakh clicks in October and nearly 35 lakh clicks in November. The visitors are none other than the unemployed youth who login repeatedly to check for fresh job notifications. And they always get disappointment," he said.

Reddy recalled that the Telangana Chief Minister, while addressing the first Assembly session, had promised to fill 1,07,744 vacancies in a year.

"Three-and-half years later, notifications have been issued for just 42,035 jobs, and only 27,874 posts have been filled as per the claims of the government. Of the 34,625 jobs notified through TSPSC, only 5,932 have been filled. The government is yet to approve 44,979 jobs," the TPCC chief said.

Reddy also said that the TRS government had failed to fill even the vacancies that existed at the time of the formation of Telangana.

"KCR is not ready to understand the gravity of the situation. In order to provide jobs to 30 lakh qualified graduates till 2019, the Telangana government should have created an average of 1,643 jobs per day or 68 jobs every hour. But so far, in the government sector, it has created just 21 jobs a day. Of the over 18.27 lakh aspirants, only 27,874 or 1.5% got recruited. What should the remaining 98.5% aspirants do?" he asked.

Reddy advised KCR to focus on real issues like unemployment instead of behaving like a "Chief Event Manager".

Claiming that the Congress would reverse the situation once it came in power in 2019, the TPCC chief said that in its regime all unemployed youth would be paid a monthly allowance of Rs 3,000 until they got a job.

On the occasion, Reddy also announced that the birthday celebrations of Congress president Sonia Gandhi would be organised on a grand scale across Telangana as "Thanksgiving Day".