Sher-e-Kashmir Employment & Welfare Programme for the Youth” (SKEWPY)

The problem of unemployment in the state, especially that of the educated unemployed has reached alarming proportions and deserves immediate focused and coordinated attention with new policy initiatives, sound institutional arrangements and effective operational strategies for creating employment opportunities and enhancing employability.

A Collective, comprehensive and holistic endeavour is required to address this gigantic problem in a principled manner, Hence, the Government announces this State policy on Employment’ to simultaneously and comprehensively address all issues relating to the problem of unemployment in the State.

The policy document is being launched on the 5th December, 2009, the 105th birthday of the great visionary of the State, the Sher-e-Kashmir, Jenab Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah Sahib and hence named as “The Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Programme for the Youth” (SKEWPY).

Statistical Base

The above date, however, had mainly two limitations, Firstly, all the unemployed persons do not register themselves with the Employment Exchanges. Secondly, those registered might also not have been totally unemployed and been only in the process of seeking better jobs. Since, process of employment by Employment Exchanges had vanished altogether over the course of time, there had been a marked decrease in the registration level at the Exchange.

In order to adopt a well conceived strategy for the alleviating the problem of unemployment in the state, there is a fervent requirement of a sound statistical base. This is more so for the reason that there is a lot of equivocation about the very extent and nature of unemployment.