Minority youth gets no govt job, alleges conspiracy

Mustaqeem, 21, has been running from pillar to post for over four years to secure a job at the India Trade Promotion Organisation. He claimed that his name had appeared in the list of permanent employees after his father died in 2005. His father worked as a guard at ITPO.

Mustaqeem alleged that the department has been denying him a job ‘giving one excuse or another’ because he belongs to a minority community. ITPO follows a policy, under which dependents of a person who passes away are given jobs once they are older than 18 years.

Four names were mentioned in a list given by the administration department in 2005.

Mustaqeem claimed his name had appeared in the list, which declared all the listed persons as permanent employees of ITPO. However, their roles were not mentioned in the list as that was supposed to be decided after they had joined the organisation. In Mustaqeem’s case, he was 16 years old when he applied for the job in 2006. He was asked to re-apply after two years.  “When I approached the authorities in 2008, I was over 18 years old. The special duty officer told me that I would be given an employment letter soon as three more persons were also applying. But I never got the letter,” said Mustaqeem.

All through 2009 and 2010, the officer kept telling Mustaqeem that he would get the job soon. In 2011, the same officer told Mustaqeem to come to his house for a talk. “He  promised to give me lakhs of rupees as compensation but said my name had been replaced and I should understand that they cannot hire me. I took the matter to the Delhi Minorities Commission because the reasons given by the officers were not satisfactory. They even started getting abusive and misbehaved with me,” said Mustaqeem. The Commission then sent a letter to Anand Sharma, minister of transport and ITPO recruitment in-charge.

“We sent the letter on November 25 and got a reply on December 5. It stated that when a special officer visited Mustaqeem’s house for inspection, the officer found him selling clothes in a shop, which indicated that he was not dependent on a government job. He is 21 years old now, and the authorities are saying that he is too old for this compensatory post. This is unfair,” said Zeeshan Ahmed, a Commission member. Ahmed said the Commission gets several cases of people being denied jobs as they belong to the minority communities.

VK Gauba, special duty officer, ITPO, refused to comment on the matter. Instead, he said details are available with the Commission. Mustaqeem, who recently got married, is shattered. “I have never worked in a cloth shop as the letter alleged. I work on construction sites to earn some money. If they don’t give me my job, what do they expect me to do? Do I have to starve and die?” he said.