Unemployment will be over in five years in J&K: LG Manoj Sinha

SRINAGAR — Jammu and Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha today said that an employment policy is being framed by the UT administration and in the next five years, unemployment will be over.

Speaking to the reporters on the sidelines of a workshop on Youth Engagement and Outreach at SKICC here, the LG Sinha said that today big business houses of the country participated in the workshop and deliberated on what can be done to end the unemployment.

“The basic aim of today’s workshop was to give proper counselling to the youth. At the government level, we are working on an employment policy and in the next five years, unemployment will be over,” the LG said.

A day-long workshop on Youth Engagement and Outreach in Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir organized by J&K government was inaugurated by LG. The workshop was attended by top industry heads from Ashok Leyland, ICICI Foundation, Bombay Stock Exchange, Universities, IIMs/IITs and policy analysts from across the country.

The outreach programme is aimed to create opportunities and infrastructure for engaging youth, addressing their issues and concerns and empower them in entrepreneurship, self-employability and create livelihood for the youth in a well-curated and holistic manner.

Addressing the gathering, the LG said that the idea behind the workshop is to create “institutional mechanism to empower and groom our youngsters and to make them valuable for J&K as well as the country.”

“In the past, many initiatives were taken to engage the youth here but all of them somehow fell short of meeting all the requirements. There is a need to have an umbrella programme that dovetails all the resources meant for this purpose to achieve the goal of youth empowerment and youth development,” he said.

“I believe in concrete plans and immediate execution. My idea of Institutional Mechanism under Mission Youth is to ensure that we have a concrete framework and a definite time-line to execute it on the fertile ground that we have prepared.”

On the occasion, he also announced that a seed fund of Rs 200 crores has been earmarked for creating initial infrastructure and institutional support for meeting the initial needs of this programme. This amount, he said, would be used to create a ‘Centre of Excellence’ and infrastructure in districts to realize our goals of making youth the leaders of success.

The LG sought support of the national-level investors and industry experts in creating robust infrastructure and employment avenues for the youth of the UT. “We not only need your investments but your expertise as well, which will help us realize the dreams of prosperity,” he said.

“It is my aim to truly create a stable policy and regulatory ecosystem to business so that they can build for scale and create a thriving start-up ecosystem which is inherently entrepreneurial in approach, creating local jobs and employment.”

The LG said that almost 65 percent of Jammu and Kashmir population is under the age of 35 years. “So, on one hand we have a demographic dividend like the rest of the country, but on the other we have faced many challenges; systemic unemployment and joblessness along with the absence of holistic development of the youth,” he said.

“The youth of J&K will be benefited from the programme through creation of opportunities in the field of sports, livelihood generation, recreation, education, counselling to effectively support and encourage young individuals to shape their future as per their aspirations.”