With own portal,Govt goes out to 40m job seekers
Website will link about 1,000 employment exchanges in the country; attract industry
Popular job portals will soon have a serious competitor the government. The Labour Ministry is planning to launch its own job website by linking the nearly 1,000 employment exchanges in the country and putting their data online.
Currently,about 40 million job seekers are registered with the employment exchanges and an estimated five million join every year. But the employment exchanges are not very effective,mainly because there are very little jobs on offer. The entire system continues to be handled manually because of which the employer-employee matching happens only at the local level.
Now,as part of the ambitious Rs 2,167 crore programme to modernise employment exchanges,the portal,possibly http://www.Indiajobs.com,is being planned in association with the industry to facilitate the meeting of job hunters and prospective employers based anywhere in the country.
Those seeking jobs would be able to register themselves not only through the employment exchanges but online as well,though they will be required to appear in person at the exchange once for the assessment of their skills and qualification.
A Labour Ministry official said the idea was to first link all these employment exchanges to the portal after which employers would be able to select skilled workers and professionals according to their requirement.
The idea is to address both the demand and supply, Director General,Directorate General Employment and Training,Sharda Prasad said.
The ministry has prepared a detailed project report and is awaiting the clearance of the Expenditure Finance Committee. The project will have four components assessment of the capabilities of the job seeker,counseling and guidance if the job seeker lacks the required skill,registration,and placement, said Prasad. The private sector comes in at this stage. The assessment of the capabilities and counseling would all be done by private players. Every state government will join hands with private agencies specialised in these services. They will be selected through an open bidding, Prasad added.
The ministry plans to persuade educational institutions beginning with the 10,000 Industrial Training Institutes that it runs and then extend it to polytechnics,engineering and medical colleges to share data of those completing training in these institutions.
Presently,the Employment Exchanges Compulsory Notification of Vacancies Act,1959 mandates the government and private sector firms employing 25 or more persons to inform the local employment exchanges about vacancies every quarter,but the compliance is only 70-75 per cent.
The ministry hopes that setting up of a portal with such a huge database would attract the industry which will,in turn,help those seeking jobs. There are also plans to change the look and feel of employment exchanges as part of the modernisation programme. On the anvil are modern structures,touch screen kiosks.
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