Bhubaneswar: The number of unemployed in the state is expected to touch one crore, said Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Niranjan Patnaik here Thursday.
Giving a grim picture of employment scenario in the state, Patnaik said Odisha now stands at the 7th position in the 10 high unemployment rate states of the country.
The unemployment rate in the state increased by 7 per cent in February 2018 from 5.5 per cent reported earlier. In March last year it again increased to 7.8 per cent.
Another disturbing fact revealed in CMIE-BSE report is that higher the education level worse is the unemployment rate in the state. The data, Patnaik said, has further revealed that the unemployment rate in category of ‘graduate or above’ is high at over 13 per cent in Odisha whereas the rate of unemployment is around 9 per cent in the education level of ‘10th/12th standard’.
As per the recent data, the number of unemployed among the educated in Odisha has crossed 22 lakh and the uneducated unemployed touched around 80 lakh. Approximately, over 1 crore in the state are jobless.
The Congress leader said in the past 19 years, the BJD government has done nothing for employment generation in the state.
He said there are no job opportunities for the youth. No new industry has come up and the existing ones have been shut down by the Naveen Patnaik government.
Youths from various districts are migrating to other states and cities in search of jobs. Many youths who have completed graduation are working as peons, security guards and waiters in other states and many are even working as bonded labourers.
There is no concrete data available with the state government on this issue, Patnaik said.
Congress national president Rahul Gandhi has given three separate guarantee cards for youth, women and farmers of Odisha. In the guarantee cards to the youths of Odisha, the Congress promised ‘Minimum Income Guarantee’ for the poor, job to one member of every needy family and regularise the services of contractual employees, he said.