DMK to stage protest against centralised recruitment for Jipmer jobs

Leader of Opposition and DMK convenor R. Siva said his party would stage a protest in front of Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (Jipmer) on Friday against the practice of imposing user fee for services and the centralised recruiting policy that would deepen the marginalisation of local job-seekers.

In a statement, Mr. Siva expressed concern that, despite the long-pending demand for increased local representation, the institution’s adoption of the Common Recruitment Examination (CRE) model, based on the AIIMS in Delhi, would further reduce employment prospects for candidates from the region.

The DMK leader also took exception to the bilingual (Hindi and English) nature of entrance tests and the special age relaxation offered to Union Government employees, stating that these measures placed Tamil and English-speaking local candidates at a clear disadvantage.

He called upon Jipmer authorities to revert to the earlier recruitment system for nursing and Group B and C posts in place of the CRE, and to reserved 50% of posts for domicile job aspirants.

According to the DMK leader, Jipmer had, on July 22, announced that recruitment to 454 vacancies for nursing officers, 446 in Puducherry and eight in Yanam, would be held through CRE.

He pointed out that when Jipmer conducted its recruitments, many local aspirants had managed to secure remunerative job positions. However, the adoption of a common entrance test will result in local job avenues being opened to candidates across India. “We will oppose a recruitment model that allows candidates who do not know the local language to enter jobs that require dealing with primarily poor patients and is exclusionary for the unemployed youth in the region”, he said.

Jipmer, which owes a large part of its success to the access to Puducherry’s land, water, and power, should not turn its back on the local people now, Mr. Siva said.