Clamour For Jobs Intensifies; Govt Replies With Force, Jail

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RINAGAR- Overwrought by long years of unemployment, the jobless educated youth of the valley now feel increasingly compelled to take to the streets to give vent to their frustrations.

Contractual Rehbar-e--Taleem teachers, teachers of ICS centers, and jobless engineers, doctors and dentists have been holding demonstrations for the past several weeks to remind the government of its promises, but the government uses force asking the police to bundle them into vehicles and cart them off to jail. Contractual teachers dentists and electricians, all jobless, held a protest demonstration in the press enclave on Wednesday.

And when the police told them to end their agitation, they refused, determined as they were to air their grievances forcefully. Eventually scores of teachers were taken to the police lock-up. A large contingent of jobless dentists, too, was arrested when it made an unsuccessful bid to present a memorandum to the chief minister. The police said that all arrested agitators were later released.

But even the arrests did not stem the flood of protests. Jobless electricians assembled next to decry the policy of recruiting on the basis of crash courses, and asked the chief minister to "come to his senses."

Every protest features angry and indignant slogans against the chief minister, but the government appears to be unmoved.

Qualified electricians have been protesting against "crash course appointees" for the past year. Observers make various interpretations of the intensifying clamour for jobs.

Sources close to the government claim that the protests are a part of a conspiracy, while public circles feel that the administration promised by the chief minister, Ghulam Nabi Azad, has not become a reality. They fed that to save their skins, ministers and bureaucrats are misleading the unemployed youth by making irresponsible statements.

On the one hand, the government harps on the "insufficiency of funds" tune, and on the other hand favoured candidates are being given jobs by creating suspect categories such as crash-courses, the public feels.

There is intense anger, among the public in general and the jobless youth in particular, about the callous and arbitrary approach of the government.

A citizen, who did not want to be named, said that he, had stopped believing in any claim or promise the government makes, and having seen the condition of the government, had advised his children to sell second-hand clothes on the pavements. One of his sons is roaming around with an engineering diploma, while the other holding a master's degree in education, is earning the princely sum of Rs 1200 as teacher in a private school.