5 yrs on, students trained under govt scheme wait for stipend

ECB has not replied to the queries till date. So, we are helpless to issue the payments.

More than 400 SC/ST students enrolled for the Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY) have been running from pillar to post to get ₹15,000 stipend, five years after completion of their skill development programme.

SJSRY is a government scheme being implemented on a cost-sharing basis between the Centre and the States in the ratio of 75:25. It aims to provide gainful employment to the urban unemployed and underemployed poor through skill development and help in setting up self-employment ventures.

Under the scheme, the students, trained at the Government Engineering College Bikaner (ECB), were supposed to get ₹15,000 stipend and a tool kit after completion of their threemonth training. However, 190 students who completed training in February 2012 and 235 others who completed training in September 2012 were neither given the kit nor paid the stipend. They were also not awarded the certificates, because of which they were unable to start their own ventures.

Since then, the students have requested the authorities for the benefits many a time, but in vain. “We do not have count of the visits we have made to the principal’s office, but every time we are given some irrelevant answers,” said Hariprasad, one of the students.

“If we go to the BMC (Bikaner Municipal Corporation) office, they (the officials) ask us to go to the SC/ST Corporation office and if we go to the District Social Welfare office, they (the officials there) say that the issue does not come under their control,” he added.

According to the SJSRY, the training institutes were bound to ensure paid employment to at least 70 percent students, but the ECB allegedly not only failed to provide employment to a single students, but ignored other important terms of the scheme.

Sources told HT that sniffing the irregularities in training, the BMC had stopped the cheque of ₹27,46,239 issued against the training expenses to ECB. “There were some irregularities observed by the former CEO and he asked the ECB officials to explain them before releasing the payments. ECB has not replied to the queries till date. So, we are helpless to issue the payments,” said RK Jaiswal, chief executive officer, BMC.

The students said they have lost faith in the system, as they have been hearing the same answers over the past five years.