Skill, labour, talent for MSMEs: The government’s job portal Sampark, which helps passed out trainees or students of MSME Technology Centers across India to connect with MSMEs for job opportunities, is failing to get through the perennial challenge of a low number of openings for job seekers. At the time of filing this report, there were only 21 job postings with a mere 102 vacancies for a whopping 4.79 lakh registered job seekers, of which 39,906 were active.
The number of jobs has in fact dropped over the past six months. As of April 24, 2022, there were 38 open job postings on the portal with 133 vacancies for 37,429 active job seekers out of 4.77 lakh registered. Moreover, the drop in vacancies has been higher at 88 per cent over the past nearly two years. As of November 17, 2020, the portal had 876 vacancies for 4.66 lakh job seekers.
Comments from MSME Ministry and DC MSME Office weren’t immediately available over email and calls.
“Different government policies, which intend to create more jobs, are good but they are not being taken up to the maximum extent of utilisation. Formulation of policies is not the answer to the problem…Government must see that funding is happening to MSMEs on time so that they can tap into more business opportunities and create more jobs that could be listed on this portal as well,” Vijay Kalantri, President, All India Association of Industries (AIAI) and Chairman, MVIRDC World Trade Center, Mumbai had told FE Aspire.
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In terms of placements, 32,950 candidates were placed so far, marginally up from 31,381 in April this year but 3X more from 10,388 in November 2020. The recruiter count has also shown a slight increase to 6,402 so far, of which 2,235 were active in comparison to 6,323 in the past six months and 5,748 in past two years.
Launched in June 2018 by the former President of India Ram Nath Kovind, MSME Sampark allows candidates to filter listed jobs as per their skills including animation, Adobe Photoshop, CNC milling, data entry operator, welding technology, social media marketing, footwear design, industrial robotics, thermal engineering, etc.
Meanwhile, India’s unemployment rate had dropped to 6.43 per cent in September this year on the back of increased labour participation in rural and urban areas after surging to a year high of 8.3 per cent, showed latest data by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE). The rural areas saw a drop in unemployment rate to 5.84 per cent in September from 7.68 per cent in the previous month, while urban areas recorded a decline to 7.7 per cent vis-a-vis 9.57 per cent in August.
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