Khanduri pulls up industry for failing to employ locals

Uttarakhand Chief Minister B C Khanduri has taken a serious note of the industrial units that are availing the benefit of the special industrial package but have failed to comply with the conditions set by the state Government to recruit the local unemployed youth.

Khanduri has directed Chief Secretary S K Das to submit a detailed report of all those industrial units which are ignoring local unemployed youth and has said that the daily-wage basis employment was not a regular employment. He directed the officials to immediately call for a meeting of such entrepreneurs and industrialists and their associations which have not recruited 70 per cent of its employees from amongst the locals. Khanduri also asked the units to invest in the hilly regions of the state.

Meanwhile, the issue of providing employment to the locals in the industrial estates set up by the state Government at Dehradun, Hardwar and UdhamSinghNagar remains a politically volatile matter.

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The previous Congress Government, led by Chief Minister N D Tiwari, was also criticised by the opposition for giving land and incentives to the industry without extracting any guarantee of employment for the local unemployed youth.

It was alleged that despite an investment of more than Rs 20,000 crore in the state only around 50,000 locals were employed by these units.

At that point, the Congress government had urged the industrial units to recruit 70 per cent of the staff from amongst the locals.