Bengaluru, 21 Feb

In a big push to help unemployed youth find jobs, the Karnataka government on Wednesday said it will hold a mega two-day job fair ‘Yuva Samruddhi Sammelana’ from 26 February here, in which over 500 firms will take part and 31,000 job seekers have registered so far.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar will inaugurate the job fair at Palace Grounds. The job fair will help youths who have a completed degree, or engineering diploma and other job-oriented courses get job opportunities.

Addressing a joint press conference at Vidhana Soudha, Minister for Skill Development and Medical Education Sharan Prakash Patil and Minister for IT-BT, Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Priyank Kharge said that the job fair is being organised by the Skill Development Entrepreneurship and Livelihood Department with the participation of the private sector. “Over 31,000 eligible candidates from across the State have already registered online for the job fair. We are expecting more candidates to register. More than 500 reputed national and global companies will take part in the job fair with nearly one lakh vacancies. This will be the right platform for youths to find jobs as per their qualification, and I urge them to participate in large numbers and make use of this opportunity,” Patil said.

The minister further added that over 600 stalls are being set up to help candidates visit the stalls to find job opportunities suitable to their qualification and requirements. The experts and the executives of the companies will be there with the information to help the job aspirants.

Praising Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for this initiative, Patil said no state in the country holds such job fairs. “Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has instructed us to organise job fairs to help unemployed youth in the state. Similar job fair was conducted during former Chief Minister SM Krishna’s tenure." He said those who are unable to get jobs in the job fair would be given training, with the help of which they can get jobs in the coming days. "Many experts have come forward to train them. Those who have registered for the job fair will get messages to visit particular stalls to find suitable jobs. Our efforts will be fruitful if large number of candidates participate and get employed,” the minister added.

Kharge said that such a massive job fair is possible only with the Congress government. Big companies set up shop here due to better infrastructure and skilled work force, he said, urging the youth to make use of this opportunity. “We are not only providing jobs but also imparting skills by opening training centres and we will try to provide jobs to those who have registered here by tracking them," the minister said.

Criticising the Centre for not fulfilling its promise to create jobs and for also stopping data collection on the number of unemployed people in the country, he said, "Prime Minister Modi had promised to create 20 crore jobs but failed. We have lost over 40,000 jobs as per NSO survey and after this report, the NSO survey was stopped." Speaking about development, he pointed out that it was the UPA government that brought the IT boom to India.