Employment exchange struggled boz of crowd

Kancheepuram:Chaos prevailed at the district sports stadium on the Railway Road here for some time on Friday morning when thousands of school students assembled at the stadium to get their names registered with the District Employment Exchange. The DEE office recently issued a release saying that those who have passed the SSLC examinations could get their names registered at the stadium on June 15 and between June 18 and 22 in view of the inadequate space in the DEE office near Vaikunthaperumal Temple in Kancheepuram.

Consequently, a large number of students from different parts of Kancheepuram district arrived at the stadium right from early morning. When distribution of application forms began at around 10 a.m. students and their parents started vying with one another to grab the forms, leading to commotion.As a result, hundreds of forms were torn and rendered useless even as a team of three constables tried to bring about some order. The process of scrutinising applications and issuing identification cards to the students began at around 11 a.m. after more police personnel were posted at the stadium.

Meanwhile, enquiries revealed that the DEE officials had taken the decision to conduct the registration at the stadium as they anticipated a huge rush this year in view of the implementation of ‘financial assistance to jobless youth’ (FAJY) scheme. If a student gets his/her name registered with the DEE now itself, he or she would automatically become eligible for the financial assistance of Rs.300 per month, after graduation.Last year, only around 10000 students, who have passed the SSLC examinations, registered their names with the DEE office. On the other hand, this year on the very first day itself, more than 2000 students have gathered at the stadium, sources said.Already the number of beneficiaries covered under the FAJY scheme in the State has increased to 4.50 lakh youth in this calendar year from 3.18 lakh youth, when the scheme was launched last year.