Yuvasree programme of West Bengal

Introduction

Employment Bank is primarily a State-owned job-portal and is a unique e-governance initiative of the Labour Department, Government of West Bengal to widen the window of job-opportunity for job seekers of the State.

'Yuvasree' (earlier named as "Yuva Utsaha Prakalpa") was launched  in 2013 for providing financial assistance to jobseekers enrolled in Employment Bank to enable them to enhance their employability by undergoing some education or training within the period of assistance.

Intervention

The Employment portal provides online modules specially designed to cater to the need of the job-providers throughout the country. Job seekers can enroll online. A temporary enrolment ID is created. The job seeker is then required to visit any Employment Exchange of the State for validation of the temporary ID. On validation, User-ID and password are sent to the job seekers through system-generated SMS.

Any Employer or Placement Agencies throughout the country can enroll in Employment Bank. Such Enrolment process is totally online. Any training providing institution of the State (affiliated by any Government Department/ Organization /University etc.) can also enroll in Employment Bank. Their enrolment process is also online.

After enrolment, the Employers and Placement Agencies can search the resumes of enrolled job-seekers and generate list as per their requirement. They can post job- related advertisements too which gets published in the portal.

'Yuvasree' (earlier named as "Yuva Utsaha Prakalpa") seeks to provide financial assistance of Rs.l ,500/- per month to first one lakh jobseekers enrolled in Employment Bank to enable them to enhance their employability by undergoing some education or training within the period of assistance.

Eligibility criteria are as follows:

• He/She must be unemployed and a resident of West Bengal.
• He/She should be enrolled with the Employment Bank as 'job seeker'.
• His /Her educational qualification should be Class Vlll pass and above.
• He/She should be between 18-45 years of age on the 1st day of April of the year in which he/she is considered under the scheme.
• He/ She has not availed financial assistance [loan under any state/central government sponsored self-employment scheme.
• Only one member of a family is eligible to receive assistance under the scheme.

The beneficiaries are required to submit a self-declaration in every six months, so as to ascertain whether the recipient is utilizing the financial assistance for the right cause and undergoing some training course/s to upgrade his/her skill and whether the beneficiary still conforms to the eligibility criteria to receive unemployment assistance under the scheme.

Key takeaways

The portal provides an interactive platform among three key parties namely the job seekers, the job providers and the education & training providing institutions. Yuvasree provides financial assistance to jobseekers enrolled in Employment Bank to enable them to undergo some training.

For more information, visit employmentbankwb.gov.in

Source : Skilling for employability - Best Practices