Disabled youths forgotten in jobs race

New Delhi, Mar 13 (UNI) Chennai accounts for the highest number of disabled jobseekers in the country. Kolkata comes second and Bangalore third.

Despite a Supreme Court order making it compulsory for companies and government departments to give three per cent of their positions to disabled candidates, only a few are getting jobs.

Of the 13,300 physically handicapped youths who applied for jobs to the Special Employment Exchange in Chennai, only 240 got jobs in 2004, the year for which the latest figures are available.

As against 9,683 disabled applicants in Kolkata, only 10 got jobs. Only 12 received jobs of the 7,878 applicants in Bangalore.

For Hyderabad, which comes fourth on the list, the placement was 13 against 6,937 applicants.

As per government statistics as on December 31, 2004, there are 112,994 disabled youths who have applied for jobs in Special Employment Exchanges in 41 cities across the country.

During 2004, only 978 disabled applicants got jobs, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Chandra Sekhar Sahu, told the Lok Sabha today.

The number of applicants at the Special Employment Exchange in Patna was 6,484 and 5 got jobs. For Mumbai, it was 6,317 and 12 received employment.

In the six Special Employment Exchanges in Kerala, the highest placement was at Kozhikode (59 against 1,670 applicants) followed by Thiruvananthapuram (54/1,954), Ernakulam (35/1,367), Kottayam (31/1,109), Neyyattinkara (20/1,930) and Kollam (6/1,316).

Of the 1,686 disabled jobseekers in Bhubaneswar, only 2 got jobs.

In Karanataka, except one of the 1,868 applicants in Mysore, none got jobs in Hubli (1,304 applicants) and Gulbarga (2,544 applicants).

UNI FZ VD KN1405