Diploma engineers in Odisha sell vegetables, polish shoes protesting lack of jobs 

Sore over a lack of employment opportunities over the years, hundreds of diploma engineers of Odisha took to the streets in Bhubaneswar on Monday to protest the alleged apathy of the state government towards them.

To express their resentment, they adopted novel ways to lodge their protests against the government. Some were seen selling vegetables in baskets, women engineers selling bangles while some others did shoe polishing.

United under the Unemployed Diploma Engineers’ Association, the agitating students alleged that though they completed engineering ten years ago, they are still unemployed. 

One of the placards read, “Retired employees are being reappointed, but educated youths are deprived of jobs.”
“There have been no job opportunities for the last ten years in the Works department. Why the department is in slumber? When scores of engineers are still going through misery, retired engineers are being appointed for work,” the agitating engineers said.

An agitating lady engineer said that she passed her Diploma in civil engineering in 2015. “For the last ten years, not a single advertisement for vacancies in the works department has been published. We are unemployed and disappointed. We have spent lakhs of rupees for studying engineering, and a lack of jobs has dashed our dreams,” she lamented.

Another lady engineer demanded that the state government should stop the appointment of retired engineers and give scope to the unemployed ones. “For the last ten years, vacancies have not been filled up. We are jobless and frustrated after waiting for so many years,” she fumed. 

A student leader lambasted the state government, alleging that since 2014 not a single vacancy has been filled up while the government is bragging about 5T and technology and transparency. “The engineers who are involved in corruption and irregularities are getting employment after retirement,” he pointed out.