In UP, 18 lakh including graduates applied for 40,000 sanitation jobs

Amid studies that say Uttar Pradesh will have 1.3 crore jobless youth (18-35 age) next year, municipal corporations across the state received 18 lakh applications for 40,000 sweepers.

The Kanpur Municipal Corporation (KMC) alone was flooded with seven lakh applications against its 3,275 vacancies for safai karamcharis. A staggering five lakh of them were graduates and postgraduates.

KMC, given its glut of applications, estimates two years to finish interviewing candidates. “It is unbelievable,” says Kanpur mayor Jagatveer Singh Drona. “Honestly, I am at a loss of words to describe the situation.”

The applicants are keen about a ‘sarkari’ job. Amit Gupta, who is pursuing doctorate after post-graduation in chemistry, has applied for the post in Jhansi, which needs 175 sweepers and 15,000 have applied. “The salary is better than what I get as a teacher in private colleges and schools. Jhansi is close to my home district of Hamirpur,” he shrugs. “There are no jobs anywhere. When I learnt about this one, I applied immediately.”

The situation at play is a grim extension of what the UP youth experienced a year ago. In September 2015, 23 lakh candidates applied for 368 vacancies for peons. The Agra Municipal Corporation, which had to fill 1,778 posts, got 90,000 applicants. Of them, 17,000 were graduates and postgraduates.