Sukhmeet Bhasin
Bathinda, March 2
More than 7,000 youths have applied for six posts of peon and 20 of process server in Bathinda District Courts.
Even youngsters with master’s and graduation degrees along with diploma holders have applied for these Class IV posts. The minimum qualification required is up to the matric level and the pay is around Rs 10,000.
The selection process will be completed in six days as around 1,200 applicants are being called for interview daily. Many candidates from far off places like Gurdaspur and Ropar also came here to apply for these posts.
A BTech passout said: “I failed to get any decent job in the private sector, so now after exhausting all my channels, I decided to apply for a Class IV job to support my family.”
Harmanjit Singh, (name changed), a BCom degree holder, who came all the way from Ropar, said: “I have no job, so I applied for these posts to support my family, who has spent on my education.”
Prof NK Gosain (retd) said the main reasons for the high unemployment rate in the state were the mechanisation of agriculture, low rate of industrialisation and lack of government jobs. “The trend shows that there is lack of jobs in the state. People prefer government jobs due to security and fixed hours of working. Even at lower levels, the government salary is better than the private sector.”
Meanwhile, Bathinda District Courts Superintendent Om Parkash confirmed that more than 7,000 youths had applied for 20 posts of process server and six of peon.
Social activist Gian Chand Bansal, however, said this shows that the state government had miserably failed in providing jobs to the youth in the past many years. He further said it was the duty of the state government to provide jobs to the educated youth for the betterment and progress of the state.
High rate of unemployment
Punjab’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average. According to data from the Centre’s Periodic Labour Force Survey 2019-20, released in July last year, Punjab had an unemployment rate of 7.4% as compared to the national figure of 4.8%.
Over 7K apply for 26 Class IV posts in Bathinda District Courts
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