7,000 apply for 13 waiter jobs at Maharashtra secretariat canteen, most of them graduates

Amidst reports of rising unemployment in the state of Maharashtra, as many as 7000 people, which include college graduates as well, have applied for 13 waiter jobs at the secretariat canteen in Maharashtra recently. What is more shocking is that the job advertisement only required candidates to be educated up to Class 4.

Following the report, NCP leader Nawab Malik hit out at the government saying it was a ‘symptom’ of the state government’s failure in creating jobs for the younger generations. “No new industries are coming up in the state, even the construction projects are stalled. There is nothing at all, people are suffering because of this crisis,” NDTV quoted Nawab as saying.

The BJP government, on the other hand, denied the allegation. "We cannot stop anyone from applying anywhere. We have added many jobs and the numbers are healthy," NDTV quoted Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.

In a recruitment drive by Indian Railways in Maharashtra, nearly 19 million people from across the country applied for 63,000 vacant posts. Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar and Piyush Goyal also rejected the claims of rising unemployment in the country.

Javadekar said, “people who choose not to work” cannot be termed as unemployed, while Goyal said, the “security attached to a government job attract such huge amount of applicants.”

The opposition regularly targets Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his alleged failure to fulfill his pre-election promise of generating two crore jobs a year.