Job schemes fail to strike a chord

Like most self-employment schemes, this one too has evoked a negligible response. And the Employment Exchange which was rechristened as the Employment and Self Employment Bureau in 1997 by the State Government has a dismal figure.

At the Development Industries Centre, a premier agency set up by the State Government to help implement these schemes dismal figures stand witness to the failure of the system.8220;This financial year we have sanctioned 2016 projects,8221; says G A Karat, manager, DIC. 8220;Till now, including last year, the banks have approved only 500 cases.8221; Laments one of the applicants for a scheme, 8220;The whole process has run into cynical bank managers and a saturated market.8221;

Most of the schemes has also failed to attract the beneficiaries. The culprit, says additional district collector Anoop Kumar, is attitude. Kumar who is trying to rev up the employment scheme with regular fortnightly meetings and reviews is fighting against an old tradition. 8220;Graduates who register with the bureau prefer government jobs to the schemes. And we are already overloaded with government jobs drying up. We have so many liabilities that it is almost impossible to find employment here.8221;

Identifying the beneficiaries has also been a problem especially with the Suvarna Jayanti Rozgar Yojana. 8220;Identifying which sections are below the poverty line becomes difficult and debars a whole lot of people,.8221; Kumar points out the underlying the confusion that has prevented the scheme from reaching out to the targetted unemployed. This almost sounded the death knell of the scheme till the district collector8217;s office decided to revive it.

At DIC, Karat elaborates on the problems that dog the schemes. With so many proposals coming in where is the space to set up new ventures, he points out. 8220;And sometimes the people who were sanctioned loans by the banks never put it to use. Recovery became a very big problem so bank managers are extra cautious before they sanction anything.8221;

Suchitra Khaire name changed has just managed to cross the first major hurdle. Armed with an approval from the DIC she is getting ready to face the ultimate challenge. Her proposal to set up a Desk Top Printing venture inDhankawdi waits to be presented before the bank manager. The spectre of her loan sanction being rejected keeps her fingers crossed as she prays that all will be fine in the end.

8220;I did my course last year and approached DIC. After registering with the Employment Bureau I prepared a proposal by getting quotations for the things required.8221;

After supplying a host of documents and a proposal that she prepared with the help of a chartered accountant, she is apprehensive. If rejected she joins the already overburdened statistics of the unemployed.

Back at the Employment Bureau, G A Sangde, assistant director, sits beneath posters urging people to sign up for the self-employed schemes. 8220;We are trying to target a 100 cases every month he says,8221; but the actual implementation of the project lies with another agency, he laments. 8220;We only monitor them,8221; he says. The multiplicity of authority flummoxes most. Approved by one, sanctioned by another and then monitored by yet another. This, at times, proves to be a heavy burden for someone out to start a new venture.

And the solution. Education, says a cross section of officials, is the answer. Additional collector Kumar says that a more pro-active role is required from the administration. 8220;We will take reviews and train the staff to attend to the problem,8221; he says.

In the meantime the self employment schemes and its prospective denizens battle for survival.