APW Urges Assam Govt to Completely Waive Off Govt. Job Aspirants' Application Fees

GUWAHATI:

Assam Public Works (APW) has asked the state government to waive all job application fees for all future candidates applying for state government employment.

The APW praised the Himanta Biswa Sarma-led government's goal of employing 1 lakh unemployed youths and stated that the whole recruiting process should be fair. The group has sent a memorandum to the Chief Minister in which it has requested the government to establish a "vigilance cell" led by higher-ranking police personnel to monitor all upcoming recruiting procedures. 

"The state government should take a step to waive off application fees to the government job aspirants. There should be a zero application fee system in all the government recruitments. The government departments should ensure that there will be no more than one interview for recruitment in a day. Also, the government should modernize all its recruitment process'', the APW said in its memorandum.  

It has also asked for an investigation into the suspected state Panchayat and Rural Development Department, Fishery Department, and Assam police SI recruitment frauds. The group has stated that the government should not engage any political figures in its hiring practices. 

"We seek that a Vigilance Cell should be formed headed by Inspector General or higher-ranking police officials to monitor every recruitment process. All recruitments must be fair so that no meritorious candidate gets disheartened and deprived of a government job he or she applies for,'' the memorandum added. 

Recently, APW has filed a police case against Prateek Hajela, the former coordinator of the National Register of Residents (NRC), alleging manipulation of family tree verification to include names of illegal migrants on the list, which was supposed to include names of real Indian citizens. 

According to Abhijeet Sharma of Assam Public Works (APW), whose appeal in the Supreme Court in 2009 sparked the process of revising Assam's NRC: "We suspect there was manipulation in family tree verification during the process that led to inclusion of many illegal and doubtful persons in the updated NRC."  

"We suspect Hajela and his close associates in collaboration with some officers, data entry operators and leaders from minority community used government mechanism to insert names of illegal migrants in the list," Sharma added. 

This is APW's tenth FIR, claiming anomalies in the revised NRC and requesting a re-verification of the whole process. In the future, the NGO intends to submit 12 more similar complaints. 

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