For a long time, the Employment Exchanges have been fulfilling the objectives by carrying out various activities assigned to them, such as registration of job seekers, submission of candidates against notified vacancies, collection of labour market information and providing vocational guidance & career counseling to the job seekers. However, with the passage of time, due to the shrinkage of job opportunities in organized sector, setting up of major recruitment agencies such as Staff Selection Commission, Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), State Public Service Commissions, State Subordinate Service Selection Boards, etc., many vacancies are not notified to the Employment Exchanges. Supreme Court judgement of 1996 gave freedom to employers to advertise their vacancies to seek nominations from open market besides notification of vacancies to Employment Exchanges. A number of private recruitment agencies and web portals have also come up for recruitment, particularly, in the private sector.
Up-gradation and Modernization of the Employment Exchanges (EEMMP) has been taken up as one of the Mission Mode Projects (MMP) under National-e Governance Plan (NeGP) of Government of India. The project is under finalisation.
Under the project, a national web portal is proposed to be developed which will work like a virtual job market. This will contain all the data regarding availability of skilled persons on the one hand and requirement of skilled persons by the industry on the other. It will help youth in getting suitable placement and enable industry to procure required skills on real time basis.
The Minister of State for Labour and Employment Shri Harish Rawat gave this information in reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.
