Phagwara, June 15
The Employment Department, Punjab, has merely become a registration agency of the unemployed and plays a negligible role in getting them into service.

Though the Compulsory Notification of Vacancies (Employment Exchanges) Act, 1959, bounds an employer to inform the employment exchange about the vacancies to be filled, it is now more of a formality, and, interestingly, most of them are not even fulfilling this condition.

The role of the department in assuring employment to the youth can be adjudged from the fact put by them on their website, www.employmentpunjab.com. It reveals that by March 31, 2006, only Ludhiana district got 520 placements, whereas the state employment exchange serving the larger employers of the state, got only 16 applicants placed.

What is the secret behind the success for the former? The large number of factories in Ludhiana. Apart from this, indicators are poor.

Some old employees of the department tell a different story.

In Amritsar district, 54,236 applicants are on record, but only 12 have succeeded in getting jobs, while in Kapurthala, one out of 8,442 applicants has bagged a job.

Likewise Patiala has 122 placements to its credit, whereas Moga has 125. Fatehgarh Sahib has 11,222 applicants on record, out of which, only 11 have bagged jobs.

Still worse, Nawanshahr with 6,575 applicants on record, Mansa with 6,576, Ropar with 34,338, Bathinda with 26,070 and Sangrur with 24,587, have not even a single placement to their credit.

In the name of activities, these exchanges claim that they have provided guidance to a large number of applicants and have motivated them, but the website reveals that in many districts they could not succeed in motivating even a single person. 

Phagwara, June 15
A couple was killed and their three children seriously injured when the car they were travelling in collided with an unidentified vehicle near the Naimajara village on the Nawanshahr-Balachaur road here on yesterday night. The children, two girls and a boy, have been sent to the PGI, Chandigarh, in a critical condition.

According to police sources, Ship Commander Tejpreet Singh Sohal (45), Archna Sohal (42) and their children were returning to Chandigarh from Amritsar in a Maruti Esteem after paying obeisance at The Golden Temple. The couple from Chandigarh were sitting on the front seat. The children were identified as Amitoj (17), Parul Sohal (11) and Jugad (6).