Student Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) on Wednesday, in a press conference, announced to carry out a rally on March 23 outside the Mantralaya.
DYFI State Secretary, Preethy Shekhar said that around 5,000 people are expected to gather near Azad Maidan from all across Maharashtra, and will march towards the Mantralaya to press their demands against the Maharashtra government.
Students and youth from 20 to 21 districts of Maharashtra will be assembled near Azad Maidan for the Morcha.” Preethy Shekhar, DYFI State Secretary.
She further added that Railways has 2.5 lakh vacancies and they re-employ the retired officers and workers but they don’t recruit the youth.
Maharashtra State Secretary of SFI, Balaji Kaletwad explained the purpose behind the Morcha.
1340 Marathi-medium schools have been closed and they were located in tribal areas of Maharashtra," Balaji Kaletwad, Maharashtra State Secretary of SFI.
In tribal areas, there are more than 10,000 children who are malnourished and die before the age of six. Balaji further said that the problem of unemployment is increasing, students who apply for government posts and take government exams don’t get recruited despite their eligibility because of fewer seats.
A survey by Labour Bureau said that 58 per cent graduates and 62.4 per cent post-graduates are unemployed. It stated that every year 15 lakh students graduate from engineering colleges and nine lakh are unemployed.
On top of that, the Maharashtra government has ordered to remove 30 per cent of the workers in the government sector and if this happens, five lakh people will be unemployed.
To this, the panel replied that after 2015, the rate for the generation of employment is decreasing every year. Criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his fake promise, the panel said that “Prime Minister Modi promised to create one crore jobs for the youth but the government was only able to create 1.3 lakh jobs.”
SFI District Secretary, Rameshwar Shere said that the BJP government has not followed the Right to Education (RTE) Act properly by not implementing and monitoring the same.
Firstly, private schools don’t admit students under RTE and even if they do, the students are forced to spend huge amount of money on all the expenditure related to their education which, by default under the RTE act, is the duty of the government but that is not implemented properly,” Rameshwar Shere, SFI District Secretary.
Talking about the scholarship for the students studying in colleges and universities, Shere said that the scholarships and fellowships are not provided timely to the students. The students get their scholarship for the previous year in the successive year of their course," he added.
Shere also criticised the poor implementation of education loan policy. He said that the students from the marginalised sections do not have access to education loan and even if they do, they are unable to pay back the loans because of unemployment as most of them don’t get jobs after completing their degree. He further said that the condition of the students in Maharashtra is the same as of the farmers as they are under pressure to pay back their loans.
The Yuva-Vidhyarthi Mahamorcha will start from Azad Maidan on March 23, 2018, at 12:30 in the afternoon and will walk till Mantralaya. Their demands from the government are to stop recruitment of the contract workers but directly recruit them in the government sector, increase in the scholarship amount for students in proportion to the inflation, to fill up more than three lakh vacancies in the government departments, and bar the shutting of schools in the state.