Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren has decided to focus on fulfilling his promise of providing employment to youth at a time when Covid-19 cases are showing a declining trend in the state.

In a meeting on Wednesday evening, Soren directed officials to remove all shortcomings and irregularities in recruitment rules within a month and publish advertisements of vacancies of different government jobs so that the recruitment process can be completed at the earliest.

“With the Covid numbers decreasing in almost all the districts, the chief minister reminded the officials about his promise made to the people that 2021 would be the year of employment. Though the promise of providing nearly 15,000 government jobs by March could not be fulfilled due to the Covid pandemic, the chief minister is determined to fulfil his pledge at the earliest. This led to the directive for completing all processes within July,” said an official in the chief minister’s secretariat.

The chief minister had called a meeting with chief secretary Sukhdev Singh, principal secretary (personnel) Vandana Dadel, Jharkhand Public Service Commission chairperson and retired IAS officer Sudhir Tripathi and advocate-general Rajiv Ranjan on Wednesday evening where the directive was issued for completing all formalities of identifying vacancies, removing loopholes in recruitment laws and publishing advertisements for recruitment within a month.

“The aim is two-fold. On one hand we will provide jobs to our talented youths and on the other, we will fill up vacancies in government departments which is affecting their functioning,” said Soren.

It was also decided to form a three-member committee to study the representation of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe candidates during promotion of government posts and submit the report to the personnel department. This report would form the basis for framing of regulations for jobs in various departments.

The chief minister had announced in Dumka in December last year that 2021 would be the year of employment for youth and nearly 15,000 government jobs would be filled up by March.

According to sources in the personnel department, there are nearly 25,000 teacher posts lying vacant in state-run schools along with over one lakh vacancies in several departments.

“There are nearly 5.25 lakh government posts, out of which 1.95 lakh have been filled so far. The maximum number of vacancies are in the school education department (104,000) followed by home, jail and disaster management departments (nearly 74,000), 35,000 in the health department, 4,036 in the legal department, 3,500 in agriculture, 3,464 in drinking water, sanitation and water resources department and 2,000 posts vacant in the road construction department,” a source said.

Youths in certain parts of the state had started a social media campaign “Jharkhand Yuva Mange Rojgar (Jharkhand youths demand employment)” from June 21 reminding the ruling dispensation about the promise of providing jobs in their manifesto for the 2019 Assembly polls.