Arvind Kejriwal Nikhil M. BabuNew Delhi
National convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other party leaders have been claiming for the past several months that their government has provided 10 lakh jobs in the private sector to Delhiites through its Rozgar Bazaar portal.
But only 12,588 people had actually secured jobs through the portal till May 1, according to official data accessed by The Hindu.
This figure of 12,588 is also an estimate of the government’s as it’s based solely on phone calls with people who posted the job openings, without cross-checking with people who actually got the jobs.
The Delhi government doesn’t have names or any other details of people who actually got jobs, multiple sources privy to the information confirmed.
“The portal was not a huge success and there was no mechanism to actually find out how many people got jobs, or their details. It worked with a very small team,” a source told The Hindu.
Despite multiple attempts, the Delhi government refused to comment on this.
The AAP government’s claims on the “10 lakh jobs” have varied over the last 20 months, depending on who made the claim and where it was made.
In an interview with The Hindu in March, when asked about it, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia reiterated that 10 lakh people actually got jobs through the portal and it was not that 10 lakh openings were posted on the portal.
But as per the data, only 76,646 candidates were “screened” by people who posted the jobs and 12,588 were the “candidates selected” from its inception in July 2020 till May 1. The government has never made this detailed data public.
‘Kejriwal model’
AAP has used the claim of providing “10 lakh jobs” on multiple occasions, ranging from election rallies to press conferences, and the Budget speech to interviews, to project what the AAP terms as the “Kejriwal model of governance” in Delhi.
The Delhi Government used to conduct job fairs, and when the pandemic hit, it was not possible to hold them, so the authorities decided to move it online — that’s was how the Delhi Rozgar Bazaar portal was born on July 27, 2020.
The first time the government used the figure of “10 lakh” was within 10 days of its launch.
As the AAP started campaigning for Assembly elections in multiple States, the figure was used in different ways. In January 2022, at a press conference in Punjab, Mr. Kejriwal said, “We have given employment to 10 lakh children during COVID.”
According to a survey conducted by the Centre, the unemployment rate in Delhi is 9.1% in October-December 2021.
https://epaper.thehindu.com/Home/MShareArticle?OrgId=GFSA08I7H.1&imageview=0
No comments:
Post a Comment