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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Cong job scheme for Jorhat youth

The relief and rehabilitation cell of the Congress will soon start the process to find employment in distant Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu for those affected by elephants and floods in Jorhat.

The cell is also readying to send 115 riot-affected unemployed from BTAD as workers to Kerala on February 27.

It has fixed a target of sending 6,000 unemployed from different parts of the state to be employed in MNCs and cashew nut factories in the three Congress-ruled states by March end.

Convener of the Jorhat district unit of the cell, Asif Iqbal Hazarika, said right after the selection process had finished for the BTAD, Jorhat was the next district as there were a number of people here and in the Majuli subdivision of the district who were affected by man-elephant conflict and floods.

“Displaced people who had nothing to do and were eking out a mere existence after their crops and houses had been destroyed by elephants time and again and those who had lost everything to erosion and floods could get employment in these states with a good pay package if they correctly filled in the forms with requisite documents,” Hazarika said.

Explaining the process, Jepul Baruah, state convener of the cell, said each form, which would contain the name of applicant, parents’ names, village, mouza, police station, district, would also require a letter signed by the gaon burah of the village and any other identification paper like name in voter list, ration card copy, so that the person does not face any problem in entering the other states or stopped from leaving by the Opposition here over some issue or the other.

Baruah said in those states where the literacy rates were very high, especially Kerala, there were plenty of highly paid jobs of temporary, contractual nature in the unskilled sector.

“We have talked to our counterparts in those states and we have also seen where these workers can be lodged and be safe,” Baruah said.

A website was under construction to put in all the names of the workers who would be sent so that everything is listed properly and organised.

Baruah said in November last year, 50 people had been sent to Kerala on an experimental basis.

“We got good feedback regarding stay, pay and working conditions and only about six returned because they could not adjust to the food there and this prompted us to go head with the plan,” he said.

Baruah said the workers were given Rs 8,000 to Rs 11,000 for the first 11 months and then Rs 17,000.

He said they were planning to knock at Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, though it was not a Congress state, because of the fast pace of industrialisation there “and there might be need of unskilled labour”.

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