Employment exchanges far from becoming counseling centres

Ranchi : The process of changing employment exchanges of State into modern state-of-the-art career counseling centres seems to have been facing hurdles that no exchange appears to overcome by the end of this year. Though Labour Minister Raj Paliwar has assured of emergence of at least four of them out of 43 in State, Deoghar, Dhanbad, Jamshedpur and Bokaro, into model career counseling centres soon, the process remains much slower than what was being claimed since almost a year ago.

“We are close to have at least four employment exchanges converted into career counseling centres soon, while process of facelift of others too will be completed by next year,” said Paliwar. As per employment exchange website data, as many as 8,78,575 unemployed youth were registered on different exchanges in State as on September 9 with 7,38,793 male and 1,39,782 female candidates seeking suitable jobs.

Notably, the department has planned big for these exchanges to develop them as counseling centers as the government has been investing huge in skill development programmes in State to provide jobs locally. Chief Secretary Rajbala Verma had said in January this year, and has kept advocating the idea since then at regular intervals and different forum, that the career counseling centres will have all basic amenities including libraries, counselors and employers registered to offer fresh jobs.

Even Chief Minister Raghubar Das has also said on few occasions about importance of modern career counseling centres in a State which was going to create lakhs of fresh jobs to local workforce locally.

Though Paliwar didn’t divulge much about obstacles, he said that the process had started in almost all the centres with infrastructure upgradation and tie-ups with potential organizations for counseling. However, he admitted that the process needed to be accelerated and he was monitoring the developments.

Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.